EL TORRA.
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ceed alone along the Hadj route, the fear of the Aeneze rendering
every one unwilling to accompany us. In a quarter of an hour we
came to a bridge over the Wady Mezareib, called Djissr Kherrey
an ); to the left, near the road, is the ruined village
Kherbet el Ghazale (,2), where the Hadj sometimes en
camps. It often happens that the caravan does not encamp upon
the usual spots, owing to a wish either to accelerate or to prolong
the journey. Past the Akabe, near the head of the Red Sea, beyond
which the bones of dead camels are the only guides of the pilgrim
through the waste of sand, the caravan often loses its way, and over
shoots the day's station; in such cases the water-skins are sometimes
exhausted, and many pilgrims perish through fatigue and thirst.
At one hour from the Mezareib, following the river that issues
from the small lake, are several mills : from thence, south-west,
begins the district called Ollad Erbed (s). Half an hour to
the right, at some distance from the road, is the village Tel el She
hab ); forty minutes, Wady Om El Dhan (),
coming from the eastward, with a bridge over it, built by Djezzar
Pasha. In winter this generally proves a very difficult passage to the
Hadj, on account of the swampy ground, and the peasants of the
adjacent villages are, in consequence, obliged to cover the road with
a thick layer of straw. At one hour to the right of the road is the
village El Torra (), on the top of a low chain of hills, forming a
circle, through the centre of which lies the road. Here, as in so
many other parts of the Haouran, I saw the most luxuriant wild
herbage, through which my horse with difficulty made his way. Ar
tificial meadows can hardly be finer than these desert fields ; and it
is this which renders the Haouran so favourite an abode of the Be
douins. The peasants of Syria are ignorant of the advantages of
feeding their cattle with hay ; they suffer the superfluous grass to
wither away, and in summerand winter feed them on cutstraw. In one
