The Rashīdī History 7.3.2

7.3.2

while round it were scattered the dome-shaped tents of willow laths, covered with sheets of felt — all grimy and greasy — and ready at any moment to be taken down by the women of the tribe, and packed, with the rest of their domestic belongings, on the backs of the camels. Of forts, walls, or streets there could have been no sign. In the daytime, the ground on which the encampment stood would have been black with the dried droppings of sheep, a foot in depth, which, whirled into the air by the west wind, would pervade, with its pungent smell, the valley for a mile round, and cover everything, even the surface of the river, with a film of black. By the evening, this unsavoury carpet would be overlaid by thousands of sheep, driven in from the neighbouring glens and packed close, in scarcely separated flocks, for the night, while outside these, long rows of camels would kneel at their tethering-ropes, and groups of shaggy ponies stand fastened to the doors of their masters' tents. Near at hand, it may be, some ruined walls or weather-worn mounds pointed to the remains of an Uighur town, or fort, destroyed hundreds of years ago, and having no more connection with the life of the people of the aul than have the ruins of an Elizabethan castle, or a Norman keep, with the inhabitants of a neighbouring county town in England at the present day.