'Southern Arabia, by Theodore Bent, F.R.G.S., F.S.A., Author of 'The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland' 'The Sacred City of the Ethiopians' 'The Cyclades, Or Life Among the Insular Greeks' etc. and Mrs Theodore Bent' [‎41] (80/552)

OUR VISIT TO EUFA'A
41
well, over which the ropes of as many large leathern buckets
pass. When these buckets rise full they tilt themselves
over, the contents is then taken by little channels to a
reservoir which feeds the dykes, transferred thence to the
palms in buckets raised by the leverage of a date-trunk
lightly swung by ropes to a frame, and balanced at one end
by a basket of earth into which it is inserted ; it is so light
to lift that women are generally employed in watering the
trees.
To manure their date-groves they use the fins of a
species of ray fish called awwal, steeped in water till they are
putrid; awwal, by the way, was an ancient name of the
Island of Bahrein, perhaps because it was the first island
of the group in size, awwal in Arabic meaning first.
The area of fertility is very rich and beautiful; it
extends all along the north coast of the island, and the
fishing village of Nayim, with its bamboo huts nestling
beneath the palm-trees, is highly picturesque ; and all this
fertility is due to the number of fresh-water springs which
burst up here from underground, similar, no doubt, to those
before alluded to which spring up in the sea. The Arabs
will tell you that these springs come straight from the
Euphrates, by an underground channel through which
the great river flows beneath the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , doubtless
being the same legend alluded to by Pliny when he
says, * Flumen per quod Euphratem emergere putant.'
There are many of them—the Garsari well, Um-i-Shaun,
Abu Zeidan, and the Adari, which last supplies many miles
of date-groves through a canal of ancient workmanship.
The Adari well is one of the great sights of Bahrein, being
a deep basin of water 22 yards wide by 40 long, beautifully
clear, and full of prismatic colours. It is said to come up
with such force from underground that a diver is driven back,
and all around it are ruins of ancient date, proving that it