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The door was formed of rough planks of date-wood, and the flooring of hard-trodden earth, covered with mats. The principal article of furniture was, as usual, the small hand corn-mill, for nearly every person in the East is still his own miller. The huts, though rude in outward appearance, were dark, cool, and comfortable within.
Two of the doorways were arched, the arch extending through the whole thickness of the walls; it was semicircular, and was constructed with bricks made wedge-shaped for the purpose. A good deal of charred date-wood was found in the house, probably the remains of rafters which had supported the roof.
The snake-charmers usually perform other tricks, such as swallowing nails and sticking an iron bar in their eyes; and they wear their hair long like women, which gives them a very wild maniacal look. Three of the mamelukes and ourselves went to Wedyen, a town and date-wood about eight miles from Toser, to the left. The date-grove is extensive, and there are seven villages in it of the same name.
Toser is a miserable assemblage of mud and brick huts, of very small dimensions, the beams and the doors being all of date-wood. The gardens, however, under the date-trees are beautiful, and abundantly watered with copious streams, all of which are warm, and in one of which we bathed ourselves and felt new vigour run through our veins.
From the many-robed Pacha, with his amber-mouthed and jewelled chibouque, longer than a lancer's spear, to the Arab clothed only in a blue rag, and puffing through a short piece of hollowed date-wood, there is, from Stamboul to Grand Cairo, only one source of physical solace.
The petrified date-wood lies about eight miles distant from Cairo; I rode out there, but did not find much to see, excepting here and there some fragments of stems and a few petrifactions lying about. It is said that the finest part of this "petrified wood" begins some miles away; but I did not penetrate so far.
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