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Updated: September 24, 2025
Elsewhere extends a great intricate network of streams with endless fields of bulrushes and stunted woods. Over these bogs hang unhealthy vapors, and among the rank reeds there is no fly, nor mosquito, nor living soul or sound in the autumn. Not even infantry could pass over this region not to consider cavalry or artillery, save in the depth of a cold winter when the water and mire is frozen.
We lunched and took our midday siesta under a wide-spreading sycamore by the stream, after walking up alongside the lakes for nearly two miles; fat milch cows, not unlike our own, were feeding by the rushing stream; birds of all descriptions filled the branches of the trees, water-hens and herons and ducks were in abundance on one of the lakes, bulrushes and water-weeds grew in them; it would be an ideal little spot in any country, but in Arabia it was a marvel.
It was formerly a place of commercial importance, and had extensive dockyards; according to tradition it is a place of Biblical associations, since a palace occupied by Pharaoh's daughter is pointed out, and also the place on the river where Moses was found in the bulrushes. The old Nilometer, for measuring the depths of the Nile, which was erected in 716, is of interest.
There were the Patriarchs, with flowing beards and in gorgeous attire; Abraham, offering up Isaac; Joseph, with his coat of many colors, thrown into a pit by his brethren; Noah's ark on an ocean of waters; Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea; Rebecca at the well, and Moses in the bulrushes.
One little urchin, for example, would play Pegasus, and cut the oddest imaginable capers, by way of flying; while one of his schoolfellows would scamper after him, holding forth a twist of bulrushes, which was intended to represent Bellerophon's ornamental bridle.
The woman was seized with incipient labour, and darting from her husband, with whom she had been quarrelling on the way, pushed on, and, in a frozen marsh, amongst bulrushes, on a bitterly cold night, was delivered of a child.
The bulrushes are tied together so as to form a flat surface some six feet in breadth and from ten to twenty feet in length. The two extremities are then rolled up and tied together. The passengers and boatmen sit upon a large square bundle of bulrushes forming the essential part of the boat, which the outward cage serves only to keep in place, and by its pointed extremities to favour progression.
When he emerged, covered with sparkling drops, he remembered that he had no towel; so there was nothing to be done but to stagger about and disport himself like a naked faun among the buttercups and bulrushes, until the sun had dried him. As soon as he was dressed, he looked at his watch, and found that it was nearly twelve. Then he consulted a little time-table, and made a rapid calculation.
Indefatigably had the besieged attempted with wicker-work and timber and palisades to strengthen this precious little fort, but they had found, even as Bucquoy and the archduke on their part had learned, that the North Sea in winter was not to be dammed by bulrushes.
She did not however forget her bulrushes, and when they came in sight of them, she ran forwards to claim Rupert's promise of gathering some for her and her little brother and sister. This was a service of difficulty, for some of the bulrushes grew in the water, and others on deceitful ground, where a pool appeared wherever Rupert set his foot.
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