BENGAZI. 351 pitched, was highly indicative of what one might imagine of patriarchal comfort and tranquillity*. We found the Arabs very hospitable and obliging, and one of our party, who had strayed from the rest, and taken shelter at night-fall in one of their tents, was received and entertained with great kindness and liberahty ; a sheep having been killed expressly for his supper, and the wmmen of the family employed for two hours in preparing it, in the most savoury manner with which they were acquainted. While the mutton was occupying the united attention of the most accomplished cooks of the household, (the mother, one of the wives, and the two eldest daughters of the host) another wife had prepared a large dish of barley-cakes and fried onions, over which was poured some hot melted butter: a great portion of this very speedily disappeared before the repeated attacks of the hungry guest, whose appetite for the savoury meat which was afterwards served up to him was not quite so great as the dish deserved; the skill of the young wife who had cooked the first mess was in consequence highly commended by her spouse, who could no otherwise account for the great portion of meat which was left, than by supposing that the first dish was most * As we repassed the same plain in J uly, many heaps of corn and barley were collected in various parts of it, and the greater part of the verdure had disappeared. We found the oxen of the place very busily employed in treading out the grain, in the good old-fashioned way practised before the invention of flails ; while the Arabs, availing themselves of a little breeze of wind, were occupied in tossing up the grain into the air which had been already trodden out, in order to separate it from the husks, after the manner often alluded to in Scripture. Among other instances of this allusion, we may mention the fragments of Nebuchadnezzar’s image, which are compared in Daniel (ii. 25.)

to “ the chaff of the summer threshing-floor carried away by the wind.”