Jethro, a retreat for ablution and for prayer, with a few troughs round it for watering cattle. It is just half-way between Hâifa and Shefa 'Amer. I paused for a moment to enjoy the scene and the silence. My mare began cropping the thickly-growing mallows. Mohammed exclaimed, "Ya Sittee, cows thrive on mallows, but to running horses they bring death." As we rode on again, I asked Mohammed if his parents still lived in Egypt. He replied, "God knows! It is more than twenty years since I left my mother. She was a widow, peace be upon her! and I have never heard of her since. It is too late now. No letter would reach her, for she is poor and unknown in the land. When the poor leave their parents, they leave them for ever. That is the reason why mothers weep and refuse to be comforted when their sons go away from their homes. Letters can be carried for the rich, and for people who are known." He was surprised to hear that in England all houses are named or numbered, and that letters directed to the poorest people in the country are taken as much care of as those addressed to the most wealthy.
Mohammed had lost the use of one eye. In answer to my inquiry, he told me that his mother had purposely destroyed the sight, by the application of poisonous leaves when he was young, to render him unfit for service in the army, for he was her only son. This practice was very common in Egypt till Ibrahîm Pasha put an effectual stop to it by ordering a regiment to be formed entirely of one eyed men, and every one who had lost the sight of an eye, either by accident or design, was compelled to join it. Mohammed, among others, was enrolled, and this Cyclopean regiment became the most formidable in Egyptian service.[1] We passed between large fields where wheat and barley
- ↑ I could not understand what sort of leaves Mohammed referred to, but they were gathered from a shrub which grows in gardens on the banks of the Nile. On homeopathic principles I suppose that this eye-destroying leaf should also have the power of renovating injured sight. Several Arabs—Christians—confessed to me, that when they were school-boys, they resorted to all sorts of schemes in order to avoid attending school. They used sometimes to rub their eyelids with freshly gathered fig-leaves, and the milky juice which exudes from them soon causes the
