HOW THE BEDOUINS CONQUER THIRST.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IX, Issue 77, 4 March 1885, Page 2

HOW THE BEDOUINS CONQUER THIRST.

In the " Waterless Land "■ water is the paramount question. If it be asked how a large body of Bedonis likV'ffio ten thousand who nearly .destroyed the British squares at Tamai, manage to subsist, the reason is plain. In the first place they do not need the enormous trains required for an Egyptian army. They ale the most abstemious of men. Each man carries a. skin of water and a small bag of grain, procured by purchase or barter from caravans; Their, camels and goats move with them, supplying them with roilk and meat, aud subsisting upon the scanty herbage and the foliage of the thorny nimosa, growing m secluded wadies. These people could live upon the increase of their flocks alone, which they exchange readily for other commodities ; "but being the exclusive carriers and guides for all the travel and commerce that cross their deserts, they realise yearly large suihb.' of money . As to water, they know every nook and hollow m the mountains, away from the trails, where some few barrels of water collect iv some, sjiaded ravinp, and they can scatter, every man .for himself, to fill their water skins. On my first expedition near the close of < the three years' drought,! reached; some wells on which I was depending, and found them entirely dry. It was several days to the next wells. But my Bedouin guides knew, soine natural: reservoirs' 'm the hills about six miles off. So' (hey tools the water camels at nightfall aud came back before daylight . with the waterskins filled. An invading army: would find jt hnrd to obtain guides, olid even if they, did) . they must keep together, aud could not leave the line of march to look for water. Besides, the Bedouins, accustomed from infancy' 'to' regard water as most precious .and rare, use it With wonderful economy. Neither mea <nor animals drink more than once m forty-eight hours. As to washing, they never indulge m such wasteful nonsense When Bedouins came, to my camp, water was always offered them. Their answer would frequently be : " No ; thanks ; I drank yesterday." They know tod well the importance of keeping up the habit of abstemiousness. No wonder they can subsist where invaders would quickly perish.