Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/90

Rh very sweet stewed apricots and rice; and baked fowls, garnished with tomatoes, filled with rice and shreds of meat. A dessert of grapes, dates, and sweetened starch, stuck with bleached almonds, followed. After coffee and pipes we called our servants together, and at about five o'clock we mounted and rode toward Yâfa. The sun was shining directly in our faces, and we watched it gradually going down behind the low coast hills which hid from our sight the Mediterranean Sea. The crescent moon rose bright and clear, throwing our shadows in long dark lines on the sandy road before us.

We saw a little company of Bedouin Arabs sitting on the wayside feasting. As soon as we had passed they rose up and started into a run, leaping and shouting vociferously, and as we and the kawass slackened our pace to join the servants who were behind they passed us, running and dancing along, snatching off each other's white skull caps, flinging them in the air, flourishing their sticks, throwing handkerchiefs at one another, screaming and singing. Their heads were shaved except just at the crown, where the hair was allowed to grow very long, and was plaited. The plait is generally twisted up, and quite concealed under skull-caps, tarbûshes, or kefias that is, shawl head-dresses. The Arab costumes are familiar to most of my readers from the pictures of them in our school-books, and I need not further particularize them here.

We soon found that these wild-looking men were quite harmless. They had only lingered on the wayside to enjoy a heartier meal than usual, and had allowed their camels to go on leisurely with two or three camel-drivers, and they were running to overtake them, which they very soon did. They then pursued their way so slowly that we quickly passed them. Some of them were mounted on the unwieldy-looking animals, and their songs were already