_ 209 _ From here on we began to feel some chill in the early mornings, but by day there was little difference, and the wind always came at its usual times. From here the camel drivers went to their homes, at a distance of a day’s journey. For this reason we were delayed from the Friday of our arrival, which was 4th August, until the next Monday, 7th, when we set out at nine o’clock in the morning. When we had done about a league and a half, we camped alongside a stream of very good water, near an orchard called Dextibar, large and very cool with fruit, where there was a Persian Moor as captain of that district. It consisted of a few small houses of the kind found around there, peopled by Persian Moors, poor people, with another three or four horsemen and about twenty to thirty foot archers. My face was already roasted, enfeebled by the midday heat, and I was threatened by slight fevers. When I got down from the camel, I fell quite senseless to the ground, with the greatest fever in the world, and I remained thus all that afternoon, so hot and dry that the only way to cool myself was to drink cold water, and then placing my hand in my mouth to throw it up again. On the next day I was lying under a tree, a little way distant from the caravan, when they came running to
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