Amongst all these date-groves are the curious Arab wells, with sloping runs, and worked by donkeys. The tall poles, to which the skins are attached, are date-tree trunks. Down goes the skin bucket as the donkey comes up a steep slope in the ground, and then, as he goes down, up it comes again full of water, to be guided into the channel, which fertilises the trees, by a slave, who supports himself going up, and adds his weight to that of the descending donkey, by putting his arm through a large wooden ring hung at the donkey's shoulder. Day after day in our camp we heard the weird creaking from these wells, very early in the morning and in the evening when the sun had gone down, and we felt as we heard it what an infinite blessing is a well of water in a thirsty land.
Leaving the palm-groves and the Portuguese fortress behind us, we re-entered the desert to the south-west; and, just beyond the village of Ali, we came upon that which is the great curiosity of Bahrein, to investigate which was our real object in visiting the island: for there begins that vast sea of sepulchral mounds, the great necropolis of an unknown race which extends far and wide across the plain. The village of Ali forms as it were the culminating point; it lies just on the borders of the date-groves, and there the mounds reach an elevation of over forty feet, but as they extend further southward they diminish in size, until miles away, in the direction of Rufa'a, we found mounds elevated only a few feet above the level of the desert, and some mere circular heaps of stones. There are many thousands of these tumuli extending over an area of desert for many miles. There are isolated groups of mounds in other parts of the islands, and a few solitary ones are to be found on the adjacent islets, on Moharek, Arad, and Sitrah.
Complete uncertainty existed as to the origin of these mounds, and the people who constructed them, but, from classical references and the result of our own work, there can now be no doubt that they are of Phoenician origin. Herodotus[3] gives us as a tradition current in his time that the forefathers of the Phoenician race came from these parts. The Phoenicians themselves believed in it: 'It is their own account of themselves,' says Herodotus; and Strabo[4] brings further testimony to bear on the subject, stating that two of the islands now called Bahrein were called Tyros and Arados. Pliny follows in Strabo's steps, but calls the island Tylos instead of Tyros, which may be only an error in spelling, or may be owing to the universal confusion of _r_ with _l_.