SYRIA 105
on. Mr. J. G. Frazer, in his Adonis, Isis, and Osiris, has collected similar expressions from many other
travellers,I returned to Iieyrout, where, finding one of my
horses killed by a fall over a cliff, and being unfit to enjoy or even to endure more riding, I sold the other, and found my way to Jaffa on board an empty collier. The part of its deck that I wanted was cleaned, and the voyage was brief and not unpleasant.
The soil about Jaffa is perfectly dry and wonderfully fertile, but only on the strict condition of its being amply supplied with water. Its environs were traversed by dusty roads between dull mud walls, on whose other side the richly watered gardens lay; so pedestrians, as might be expected, were thirsty and covetous. I saw a sort of pump handle with a spout on the side of the road, and an inscription above bearing some such encouraging text as " Drink! Here is water." Accordingly we pumped, and a little water did certainly come ; but however hard we pumped there issued no more than a scanty streamlet out of the spout. We heard, all the same, a sound of abundance of water that never reached us, the cause of which was soon discovered to be an ingeniously arranged division, by means of which the pumper got only a stnalll fraction of the water he raised, and the garden got all the rest. It was an excellent example of the higher forms of commercial enterprise. They enrich all round, but the merchant to whose initiative they are due gets by far the biggest share.
I was too unwell for a long day's ride on horse-
