ies. Within
four miles round about are goodly gardens and vineyards and trees, which
beare goodly fruit neere vnto the riuers side, which is but small; the
walles are about three English miles in compasse, but the suburbs are
almost as much more. The towne is greatly peopled. We departed from thence
with our camels the last day of May with M. Iohn Newbery and his company,
and came to Birrah in three dayes, being a small towne situated vpon the
riuer Euphrates, where it beginneth first to take his name, being here
gathered into one chanell, whereas before it commeth downe in manifolde
branches, and therefore is called by the people of the countrey by a name
which signifieth a thousand heads. Here is plenty of victuals, whereof we
all furnished our selues for a long iourney downe the aforesayd riuer. And
according to the maner of those that trauell downe by water, we prepared a
small barke for the conueyance of our selues and of our goods. [Sidenote:
Euphrates shallow.] These boates are flat bottomed, because the riuer is
shallow in many places: and when men trauell in the moneth of Iuly, August,
and September, the water being then at the lowest, they are constrained to
cary with them a spare boat or two to lighten their owne boates, if they
chance to fall on the sholds. [Eight and twenty days iourney by riuer.] We
were eight and twenty dayes vpon the water betweene Birrah and Felugia,
where we disimbarked our selues and our goods. Euery night after the Sun
setteth, we tie our barke to a stake, go on land to gather sticks, and set
on our pot with rice or brused wheat, and hauing supped, the marchants lie
aboord the barke, and the mariners vpon the shores side as nere as they can
vnto the same. [Sidenote: Arabians vpon the riuer of Euphrates.] In many
places vpon the riuers side we met with troops of Arabians, of whom we
bought milke, butter, egges, and lambs, and gaue them in barter, (for they
care not for money) glasses, combes, corall, amber, to hang about their
armes and necks, and for churned milke we gaue them bread and pomgranat
peeles, wherewith they vse to tanne their goats skinnes which they churne
withall. [Sidenote: The Arabian women weare golde rings in their nostrels.]
Their haire, apparell, and colour are altogether like to those vagabond
Egyptians, which heretofore haue gone about in England. Their women all
without exception weare a great round ring in one of their nostrels, of
golde, siluer, or yron, accordi