e Hebrews on the desert took
some milk and cream and poured it into a bag made of skin, and hung it
by a stout cord from a pole. One of the women, or a boy, pounded this
bag until the butter came out. This was their way of churning. Cheese
also was a favorite article of diet. The milk was curdled by means of
the sour or bitter juices of certain plants, and the curds were then
salted and dried in the sun. Curdled milk even more than sweet milk
was also used as a drink. It probably tasted like the _kumyss_, or
_zoolak_, which we can buy in our drug stores or soda fountains.

We would get very tired of milk and milk products if we had nothing
else to eat all the year round; and so did these shepherds. They were
eager to get hold of wheat and barley, whenever they could buy them.
The women took the wheat and pounded it with a wooden mallet or a
stone in a hollow in some larger stone. The coarse meal which they
made in this way they mixed with salt and water and baked on hot
stones before the campfire. Once in a great while it was possible, in
this shepherd life, to have a feast with mutton or kid or lamb. But
milk and wool were so valuable that the shepherds were very
cautious about killing their flocks. It was, you see, a very simple
and healthful diet on which these tent-people lived. But one meal was
pretty much like another. Dinner was like breakfast, and tomorrow's
meals would be just like to-day's. It is not strange that they often
longed for a change, and looked with envy at the crops of the farmers
in the settled lands beyond the desert.

+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| [Illustration: BRONZE NEEDLES AND PINS FROM RUINS OF ANCIENT |
| CANAANITE CITY] |
| |
| [Illustration: CANAANITE NURSERY BOTTLES (CLAY)] |
| |
| [Illustration: CANAANITE SILVER LADLE] |
| |
| [Illustration: CANAANITE FORKS] |
| |
| Cuts on this page used by permission of the Palestine Exploration |
| Fund. |
+---------------------------------------