MOTORS REPLACE CAMELS.

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7061, 8 November 1929, Page 13

MOTORS REPLACE CAMELS.

When the RuiwaUaih tribe of Bedouins in Syria, a tribe that numbers several hundred teats, breaks camp for the day's march to new water holes, the camel of their chief, Nuri Shalaan, is prepared with the due pomp and ceremony for the journey, and leads the long procession, but Nuri Shalaan himself steps into a motor car, and, driven by a member of his tribe in the same flowing robes and kaffeh as himself, he speeds across the desert holding a hunting rifle on the lookout of gazelles and other game. The radiator cap of his oar is hung with blue beads to ward off the influence of thte evil eye, and in this respect he is not different from the great majority of Syrian oar owners, who almost invariably place at least a few blue beads on their machines for the same purpose. Practically every oar used in Damascus bears these charms, which are usually the only visible link aside from the occasional picturesque native costume of the chauffeur, between the starw modernity of the oar itself, and the ancient streets through which it posses.