We once more passed the Tell and found another smaller well near it. Marching east, we came on flocks of sheep, with a few goats among them, driven mostly by girls under twelve years of age--the age no doubt of Leah when Jacob first came to Haran. As is still the custom of the Bedawîn, the girls over fourteen were no doubt, in Jacob's time, withdrawn to the privacy of the women's apartments in the tents, and this seems to agree with the account of Jacob's kissing his cousins, for if they were more than children such a salute would surely have been quite contrary to Eastern ideas of propriety. Small as the flocks appeared, from the great extent of the plain, the smallest contained at least twenty head, and the average was over one hundred, so that we came across at least eight hundred in all. This gives an idea of the immense number of the flocks which exist in this apparently sterile desert, where it seems impossible that they can find anything to eat in autumn.
We also saw large coveys of the sand-grouse or pintail, which is not found in the hills of Palestine, though in summer it comes up the Jordan Valley; the crops of those we shot were full of hard round seeds and of small pebbles.
The journey was tedious, and the scenery very monotonous. Ten miles from Beersheba we came upon another ruined town with two wells, also containing water. The place has lost its old name, and is now only known as El Meshâsh, "the water-pits.â It must have been a very important town, yet hitherto it has escaped notice, other travellers having gone by routes east and west of the place, and never across country; thus the discovery was left for us, and the utility of systematic survey once more exemplified.
After travelling for miles without seeing a living thing, we came suddenly on this site, with brown ruins, and a crowd of dusky naked men drawing water in a frenzied manner, and a few women in sweeping garments, driving diminutive donkeys laden with black water-skins.
Tell el Milh is a third site of character similar to the last; it is the Malatha of the fourth century, and possibly the "City of Saltâ (as the modern name signifies) noticed in the Bible (Josh. xv. 62). There is here a great hillock with Arab graves on the top, ruins of an extensive town, and on the north two wells, just like those at Beersheba. Crowds of horses, goats, sheep, and camels surrounded them, and the song of the water-drawers was loud and wild.