Salam has few songs of his own, and does not care
to sing them, lest his importance should suffer in the native eyes, but he
possesses a stock of Arabian Nights' legends, and quotes them as though
they were part of Al Koran.
Now and again, in some of the waste and stony places beyond Dukala's
boundaries, we come across a well, literally a well in the desert, with
husbandmen gathered about it and drawing water in their goat-skin buckets,
that are tied to long palmetto ropes made by the men of the neighbouring
villages. The water is poured into flat, puddled troughs, and the thirsty
flocks and herds drink in turn, before they march away to hunt for such
scanty herbage as the land affords. The scene round these wells is
wonderfully reminiscent of earliest Bible times, particularly so where the
wandering Bedouins bring their flocks to water from the inhospitable
territory of the Wad Nun and deserts below the Sus.
I note with pleasure the surprising dignity of the herdsmen, who make far
less comment upon the appearance of the stranger in these wild places than
we should make upon the appearance of a Moor or Berber in a London street.
The most unmistakable tribute to the value of the water is paid by the
skeletons of camels, mules, sheep and goats that mark the road to the
well.
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