United States or Cabo Verde ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In contrast with the brighter frondage of these were dark cone-shaped cedars, and spire-like forms of the yew. There were date-trees and weeping willows growing upon the river bank, and drooping gracefully over its current. Beautiful birds of many varieties might be seen among the copses, or moving over the grassy sward of the lawn.
By the Arabian historians it is usually called Wady Merr. The cultivated grounds in Wady Fatme contain principally date-trees, which supply the markets of the two neighbouring towns; and vegetables, which are carried every night, on small droves of asses, to Mekka and Djidda. Wheat and barley are also cultivated in small quantities.
Firs, dragon-trees, olive, fig, and date-trees form large forests, and sheep, goats, and wild dogs are found here in large numbers. The soil is very fertile, and produces two crops of corn every year, and that without any means of improving it. Its inhabitants form a large body of people, and consider themselves all on an equality.
Behind the city was a forest of date-trees, and beyond these and all around, as far as the eye could wander, was an immeasurable waste an ocean of sand a great part of which we could have sworn was water, unless told to the contrary. We were met, before entering Toser, with some five or six hundred Arabs, who galloped before the Bey, and fired as usual.
Beyond a patch of pebbles lay a brown carpet of tough grass. In the center stood seven date-trees and a considerable number of stunted bushes, these latter differing from the sayall only in the size of their thorns, which were fully two inches long and seemingly untouchable.
The country, at some distance from the town, consists chiefly of low hills, which are covered with beautiful woods of cocoa-nut and date-trees; in the plain surrounding the town there are also many such groves divided into gardens by walls.
Here I observed a number of date-trees, and a mosque built of clay, with six turrets, on the pinnacles of which were placed six ostrich eggs. A little before sunset we arrived at the town of Samee, on the banks of the Senegal, which is here a beautiful but shallow river, moving slowly over a bed of sand and gravel.
On the 12th July the caravan left El Harib, and eleven days later entered the province of Talifet, famous for its majestic date-trees. At Ghourland, Caillié was welcomed with some kindness by the Moors, though he was not admitted to their houses, lest the women, who are visible only to the men of their own families, should be seen by the irreverent eyes of a stranger.
Their women, however, it is allowed, can speak Arabic; but the truth is, that the stranger who alights at their tents is entertained by the women, and not by the men. It is a fertile valley between inaccessible mountains, in which the passes are so narrow that two camels cannot go abreast. The valley is watered by rivulets, and abounds with date-trees.
The journey to Medina, like that between Mecca and Jeddah, was accomplished at night, and afforded little opportunity for observation. In the winter night-travelling is less comfortable than travelling by day. A valley called Wady-Fatme, but generally known as El-Wadi, was crossed; it abounded in shrubs and date-trees, and was well cultivated in the eastern portion.
Word Of The Day