erect huts or booths of loose stones, covered with reeds and boughs. Pococke found, in the neighbourhood of Acre, some open huts, made of boughs raised about three feet from the ground, inhabited by Arabs. In such booths, many of the people of Israel were obliged to take shelter in the wilderness, from the want of a sufficient number of tents; the remembrance of which they were commanded to preserve by a solemn festival. But even these meaner and more inconvenient habitations, are not always within the reach of an Arabian shepherd; he is often obliged to take refuge under the projecting rock, and to sleep in the open air. A grove or woodland occasionally furnishes a most agreeable retreat. The description which Chandler has left us of one of these stations, is so strikingly picturesque, that it must be given in his own words. "About two in the morning, our whole attention was fixed by the barking of dogs, which, as we advanced, became exceedingly furious. Deceived by the light of the moon, we now fancied we could see a village; and were much mortified to find only a station of poor goat-herds, without even a shed, and nothing for our horses to eat. They were lying, wrapped in their thick capots or loose coats, by some glimmering embers, among the bushes in a dale, under a spreading tree by the fold. They received us hospitably, heaping on fresh fuel, and producing sour curds and coarse bread, which they toasted for us on the coals. We made a scanty meal, sitting on the ground, lighted by the fire and by the moon; after which, sleep suddenly overpowered me. On waking, I found my two companions by my side, sharing in the comfortable cover of the janizary's cloak, which he had carefully spread over

P Trav. vol. ii, p. 158.

us.

I was now much struck with the wild appearance of the spot. The tree was hung with rustic utensils; the she-goats in a pen, sneezed, and bleated, and rustled to and fro; the shrubs, by which our horses stood, were leafless, and the earth bare; a black cauldron with milk, was simmering over the fire; and a figure, more than ghaunt or savage, close by us, struggling on the ground with a kid, whose ears he had slit, and was endeavouring to cauterize with a red hot iron." This description forms a striking comment on a passage in Ezekiel, in which God condescends to give this promise to his people: "I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land; and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods." No reasonable doubt can be entertained that they were often exposed in the same manner, while tending their flocks; and in great danger, when their country, from the thinness of the population or other causes, happened to be overrun with beasts of prey. They are, accordingly, cheered with the sure prospect of those ravenous animals being exterminated, and every woodland becoming a place of safety to the slumbering shepherd.

In the time of Chandler, it was still the custom of eastern shepherds to sit at the door of their tents in the heat of the day. That traveller, "at ten minutes after ten in the morning," was entertained with the view of a plain full of booths, with the Turcomans sitting by their doors, under sheds resembling porticoes, or by shady trees, surrounded with flocks of goats. In the same situation the three angels found Abraham, when they came to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, sitting under the portico, or skirts 4 Ezek. xxxiv, 25. Chandler's Trav. p. 157. Ibid. p. 180, 181.

of his tent, near the door, to enjoy the refreshing breeze, and superintend his servants. It was not the hottest part of the day, when Chandler saw the Turcoman shepherds sitting at the doors of their booths; it was soon after ten in the morning; and when Abraham was sitting at his tent door, it might be nearly at the same hour. In the hottest part of the day, according to the practice of those countries, the patriarch had been retired to rest.

The goats of the Turcomans were feeding around their huts; and if Abraham's cattle, which is extremely pro bable, were feeding around his tent in the same manner, it accounts for the expedition with which he ran and fetched a calf from the herd, in order to entertain his visitants.

In winter, the Arabians and their cattle lodge toge ther; on this account they encamp in valleys, or on the sea shore upon the sand, in order to avoid the inconvenience of mire: but the emirs, or princes, live in a very different way; they have always two tents, one for themselves, and the other for their wives, besides a number of small ones for their domestics, together with a tent of audience. In the same style of rustic magnificence, the patriarchs seem to have lived; for Abraham and Sarah occupied separate tents, as did Isaac and Rebecca; and from them, it is probable, the custom descended to the Arabian shepherds of modern times.

In summer, the flocks were enclosed in folds, to which allusion is frequently made in the sacred volume. The fold of Polyphemus, the far famed Sicilian shepherd, was a spacious cave, where his cattle, his sheep, and goats reposed. In Persia the shepherds frequently drive their flocks into caverns at night, and enclose them by heaping D'Arvieux Voy. dans la Palest. p. 175. * Odyss. lib. ix, 1. 185.

VOL. II.

Ee

up walls of loose stones." But the more common sheepfold was an enclosure in the manner of a building, and constructed of stone and hurdles, or fenced with reeds." It had a large door, or entrance, for admitting the flock, which was closed with hurdles; and to facilitate the tithing, which was done in the fold, they struck out a little door, so small, that two lambs could not escape together. To this entrance, which is still used in the east, our Lord alludes in this declaration : " He that entereth not by the door into the sheep-fold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber."w

To remove the impurities which the wool might have contracted in the course of the year in the sandy deserts, it was the custom in those countries, as in our own, to wash their flocks in the standing pool or flowing stream. But in what manner they accomplished this necessary operation, whether by the hand of the shepherd, or by leaping the sheep from the brow of a rock into the pool below, does not certainly appear. The direction of Virgil to the shepherds of Italy, seems to favour the last method:

"Dulcibus idcirco fluviis pecus omne magistri," &c.

Geor. iii, 1. 445.

On this account, the shepherds drench the whole flock in sweet rivers, and the ram, with humid fleece, is plunged in the pool, and sent to float along the stream.

Sheep-washing is only once mentioned in Scripture ; the passage occurs in the Song of Solomon, and is thus translated: "Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which come up from the washing."x The

" Morier's Trav. vol. i, p. 61.

Varro de Re Rust. lib. ii, c. 2.

▾ John x, 1.

* Ch. iv, 2.

embrowned fleece is taken off; every speck of impurity is washed away in the flowing stream; the flock, shining in the purest white, go up from the pool, as their cus tom is, in a line; from these circumstances, the royal preacher borrows the beautiful comparison in this passage; and it is scarcely possible to conceive one more striking and appropriate, to describe the teeth, at once so ornamental to the mouth, and so beneficial in the work of nutrition, clean as the fleece which has been washed in the running stream; "white as the colour of the purest wool; none rising higher than the other; none standing unduly prominent beyond another; but all set as true as if they were ranged by the compass; and making as regular an appearance as the flocks that are even shorn.” It places before us, with equal force and propriety, the spiritual meaning of the text; for whether we apply it, with the Chaldee paraphrast, to the ministers of religion, who, under the former economy, fed upon the sacrifices, as the representatives of the people, or who, since the coming of Christ, are engaged in teaching them, and conducting the affairs of the church; or, with the Christian expositor, to the graces of the Holy Spirit, and their corresponding exercises in the genuine believer,-it gives us a most vivid idea of the immaculate purity and perfect regularity, which ought to adorn the character and actions of the minister or the private Christian.

Sheep-shearing is an operation to which allusion is more frequently made in the sacred volume. The wool in very remote times was not shorn with an iron instrument, but plucked off with the hand. From the concurrent testi

Virgil.

Hervey's Theron and Aspasio, vol. ii, p. 385, note.

a Varro de Lingua Latina, lib. iv. De Re Rustica, lib. ii, cap. 11. And the custom of plucking off the fleece continued till the age of Varro, who