Around it some camels stood, and others knelt.
There was a group of sober little donkeys with naked, dusky children clambering about them, or sitting astride their rumps, or pulling their tails.

Tawny, black-eyed, barefooted maids, arrayed in rags and adorned with brazen armlets and pinchbeck ear-rings, were poising water-jars upon their heads, or drawing water from the well.

A flock of sheep stood by, waiting for the shepherds to fill the hollowed stones with water, so that they might drink--stones which, like those that walled the well, were worn smooth and deeply creased by the chafing chins of a hundred generations of thirsty animals.

Picturesque Arabs sat upon the ground, in groups, and solemnly smoked their long-stemmed chibouks.

Other Arabs were filling black hog-skins with water--skins which, well filled, and distended with water till the short legs projected painfully out of the proper line, looked like the corpses of hogs bloated by drowning.