Page 143 - Travels in Arabia (Vol 2)_Neat

124 SURVEY OF THE [CH.

proved intensely cold; for the hills on the
Egyptian coast over which it blew were

covered for more than half their height with
snow. At this period, the fish in the shallow
water arc driven by the force of the winds
and waves upon the beach, and furnish an
ample supply of food to the Bedowins; for
the dryness of the atmosphere prevents their
decay for many days. After a long continu­
ance of north-westerly breezes at Yembo and
Jiddah, the fish thus obtained forms the prin­
cipal support of the poor*.
Entering by a winding and intricate pas-

* Mr. St. John, in his “ Travels in the Valley of the Nile,*'
describes some similar appearances on the shores of Lake Mceris.
“ When we had reached the beach,” says he, “ both sight and
smell were struck by prodigious numbers of dead fish, which
having, as the natives afterwards informed us, recently perished
through cold, had been driven on shore by a tempestuous north
wind. The quantity was incredible, lining the shore as far as the
eye could reach, as if a multitude of fishermen had just emptied
their nets there. They were exceedingly varied in form and size;
some measuring nearly five feet in length, and of more than pro­
portionate thickness; and of these, many hundreds lay among
the smaller fry in the mud, while others were scarcely larger than
a herring. In general, the larger were close to tho water, the
smaller in many instances having been carried by the waves
twenty or thirty yards inland. The stench arising from so great
a quantity of fish putrefying in the sun was almost insupportable,
and must have communicated a pestilential quality to the at­
mosphere/’—Vol. ii., p. 246.