_ 337 _ saddle-bags with things to eat, won, by casting lots, a small fur-lined garment belonging to the black girl, which he then put on. He brushed against me and my clothes with it, so I gave him a xain to leave it at a distance, which he then did; for it was such, that even if it were not suspect, it was not worth keeping. What kept me alive all this time was a small piece of bezoar(A) which I was carrying with me.. Every day I took a little dissolved in a little water, and every morning I ate a head of raw garlic. For someone like me it was death, for I was not accustomed to it. That afternoon we put up at another village called Hiemet, also peopled by Kurdish Moors; and on the next day, which was Monday, Christmas Eve, at another, where everybody lives as in those before, about a league from Carahemite; but as it was late, and the day very stormy and rainy, we could not reach there. We slept in a very small caravanserai, built of mud and poorly roofed, full of mud, which looked like a pigsty. It was a very great sadness for me to find myself on such a day in such a place, with the plague all around; and I remembered others I had spent in great contentment and the great festival which was being celebrated throughout Christendom. (A) A stony deposit found in the stomachs of animals and regarded as a cure for the plague.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTg0NzAy