Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/398

344 the whole encampment was in confusion. We left Harrân at 4, glad to have escaped the melee, and at the distance of half-a-mile from the village saw the well where Jacob is said to have had his first interview with his cousin Rachel (Gen. xxix. 1—8.) The flocks of the Arab are still watered there, and there, close by the well's mouth, are several large stones, one of which Jacob's hands may have touched when he wooed the "beautiful and well-favoured Rachel." There are two or three other wells in the vicinity, but this is the only one near Harrân containing sweet water, the rest being brackish; so I think there is good reason to believe the authenticity of the tradition attached to the "Beer Yaacoob." We followed the direct route to Urfah, cantered the greater part of the way, and in less than five hours entered the town, where we were again welcomed by our kind host Mokdisi Yeshua.

I shall now offer a few remarks upon the character of the Bedooeen Arabs, and in so doing shall endeavour to estimate aright their virtues and their vices. My first acquaintance with them began in 1835, when I travelled through Syria and Palestine to the borders of the Euphrates; and during my two visits to Mosul I had frequent opportunities of mixing with them, and of conversing with many of the chiefs, who are all well known to Mr. Rassam. The halo of romance, which eastern tales and the flowery narratives of some modern travellers, had thrown around this interesting people, gradually disappeared, together with my own fanciful prepossessions in their favour, as I became more intimately acquainted with their domestic and social habits, and began to perceive that the gay hues in which they had been depicted, were rather the pencillings of the imagination, than the sober colours of reality and truth. It is not to be questioned but that the Arabs are endowed with a few good and sterling qualities, the want of which among the dwellers of the towns and villages, and not any pre-eminence in those qualities, constitutes the real difference between the two classes. They are remarkable for temperance in eating and drinking, for great powers of endurance, and for an independent bearing, as far removed from the haughtiness of the Turk, as it is from the cringing servility of the long-oppressed rayah. But these peculiarities spring almost of necessity from their mode