are fastened small jars or wooden buckets. One side descends while the other rises, carrying the small buckets with them; those descending empty, those ascending full, and as they pass over the top they discharge into a trough which conveys the water to the cistern. The length of these hawsers and the number of the buckets depend, of course, upon the depth of the well, for the buckets are fastened on the hawser about two feet apart. The depth of wells in Jaffa varies from ten to forty feet. If the mule or camel turns the wheel rapidly, which he rarely does, a bucket with about two gallons of water will be carried over the top of it and discharged into the trough every second; and it must be a good pump that will steadily do as much. The hawser is made of twigs, generally of myrtle, not merely because it is cheap and easily plaited by the gardener himself, but because its extreme roughness prevents it from slipping round on the wheel, as an ordinary rope would do, and thus fail to carry up the loaded buckets.

The

There are other kinds of water-wheels in this country. shadûf, so conspicuous on the Nile, is nowhere to be seen in Palestine, but the well-sweep and bucket are used in many places; and I once saw an Egyptian working an apparatus much like the shadûf on the shore of the lake a little north of the city of Tiberias.

Another method is common in this land of Philistia, which I have also seen on the plains of Central Syria. A large buffalo-skin is so attached to cords that, when let down into the well, it opens and is instantly filled, and, being drawn up, it closes so as to retain the water. The rope by which it is hoisted to the top works over a wheel, and is drawn by oxen, mules, or camels, that walk directly from the well to the length of the rope, and then return, only to repeat the operation until a sufficient quantity of water is raised. This, also, is a very successful mode of drawing water.

The wheel and bucket, of different sorts and sizes, are much. used where the water is near the surface, and also along rapid rivers. For shallow wells merely a wheel is used, whose diameter equals the desired elevation of the water. The rim of this wheel is large, hollow, and divided into compartments answering the place of buckets. A hole near the top of each bucket allows it to fill, as that part of the rim, in revolving, dips under the water. This, of

METHODS OF IRRIGATION.-NÂ'URAH AT HAMATH.

21

course, will be discharged into the trough when the bucket begins to descend, and thus a constant succession of streams falls into the cistern. The wheel itself is turned by oxen, or mules, or camels.

This system of wheels is seen on a grand scale at Hums, Hamath, and all along the Orontes. The wheels there are of enormous size. The diameter of some of those at Hamath is eighty or ninety feet. Small paddles are attached to the rim, and the stream is turned upon them by a low dam with sufficient force to carry the huge wheel around with

THE SHADUF.

all its load of ascending buckets. These immense wheels are driven. by the river itself; and the water, carried up to the required height, is sufficient to irrigate the extensive gardens. There is, perhaps, no hydraulic machinery in use by which so much water is raised to so

great an elevation at so small an expense. Certainly I have seen none so picturesque or so musical. These wheels, with their enormous loads, slowly revolve on their groaning axles, all day and all night, each one singing a different tune, with every imaginable variation of tone, sobs, sighs, shrieks, and groans-loud, louder, loudest, down to the bottom of the gamut-a concert wholly unique and half infernal in the night, which, heard once, will never be forgotten.

To what does Moses refer in the eleventh chapter and tenth verse of Deuteronomy? "For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs.""

The reference, perhaps, is to the manner of conducting the water about from plant to plant, and from furrow to furrow, in irrigating a garden of herbs. I have often watched the gardener at this fatiguing and unhealthy work. When one place is sufficiently saturated, he pushes aside the soil between it and the next furrow with his foot, and thus continues to do until all are watered. He is thus sometimes knee-deep in mud, and many are the diseases generated by this slavish work.

some.

Or the reference may be to certain kinds of hydraulic machines. which were turned by the feet. I have seen small water-wheels thus worked, and it appeared to me to be very tedious and toilIf the whole country had to be irrigated by such a process, it would require a nation of slaves like the Hebrews, and taskmasters like the Egyptians, to make it succeed. Whatever may have been the meaning of Moses, the Hebrews, no doubt, had learned by bitter experience what it was to water with the foot, and this would add great force to the allusion, and render doubly precious the goodly land which drank of the rain of heaven, and required no such drudgery to make it fruitful.

The fruits of Jaffa are the same as those of Sidon, but with certain variations in their character. Sidon has the best bananas, Jaffa furnishes the best pomegranates. The oranges of Sidon are more juicy and of a richer flavor than those of Jaffa; but the latter are

1 See illustration on page 14.