Thence we passed through the dry Bb ("sea gap"), cut by a torrent in the regular line of the coralline cliff, the opening of the Wady Mellh, off which lay our Sambk. Marching up the Wady Maka'dah, our experienced eyes detected many small outcrops of quartz, formerly unobserved, in the sole and on the banks. The granite hills, here as throughout Midian, were veined and dyked with two different classes of plutonic rock. The red and pink are felsites or fine-grained porphyries; the black and bottle-green are the coarse-grained varieties, easily disintegrating, and forming hollows in the harder granite. The ride was made charming by the frontage of picturesque Jebel 'Urnub, with its perpendicular Pinnacles upon rock-sheets dropping clear a thousand feet; its jutting bluffs; its three huge flying Buttresses, that seemed to support the mighty wall-crest; and its many spits and "organs," some capped with finials that assume the aspect of logan-stones. There was no want of animal life, and the yellow locusts were abroad; one had been seized by a little lizard which showed all the violent muscular action of the crocodile. There were small long-eared hares, suggesting the leporide; sign of gazelles appeared; and the Bedawin spoke of wolves and hyenas, foxes and jackals.

We camped upon the old ground to the southwest of the Jebel el-Abyaz; and at the halt our troubles forthwith began. The water, represented to be near, is nowhere nearer than a two hours' march for camels; and it is mostly derived from rain-puddles in the great range of mountains which subtends maritime Midian. But this was our own discovery. The half-Fellah Bedawin, like the shepherds, their predecessors, in the days of Abimelech and Jethro, are ever chary of their treasure; the only object being extra camel-hire. After eating your salt, a rite whose significance, by-the-by, is wholly ignored throughout Midian and its neighbourhood, they will administer under your eyes a silencing nudge to an over-communicative friend. 'The very children that drive the sheep and goats instinctively deny all knowledge of the Themil ("pits") and holes acting as wells.

At the head of the Wady el-Maka'dah we halted six days (December 24—30); this delay gave us time to correct the misapprehensions of our flying visit. The height of the Jebel el-Abyaz, whose colour makes it conspicuous even from the offing when sailing along the coast, was found to be 350 (not 600) feet above the plain. The Grand Filon, which a mauvais plaisant of a reviewer called the "Grand Filou," forms a "nick" near the hill-top, but does not bifurcate in the interior. The fork is of heavy greenish porphyritic trap, also probably titaniferous iron, with a trace of silver,[EN#22] where it meets the quartz and the granite. Standing upon the "old man" with which we had marked the top, I counted five several dykes or outcrops to the east (inland), and one to the west, cutting the prism from north to south; the superficial matter of these injections showed concentric circles like ropy lava. The shape of the block is a saddleback, and the lay is west-east, curving round to the south. The formation is of the coarse grey granite general throughout the Province, and it is dyked and sliced by quartz veins of the amorphous type, crystals being everywhere rare in Midian (?) The filons and filets, varying in thickness from eight metres to a few lines, are so numerous that the whole surface appears to be quartz tarnished by atmospheric corrosion to a dull, pale-grey yellow; while the fracture, sharp and cutting as glass or obsidian, is dazzling and milk-white, except where spotted with pyrites—copper or iron. The neptunian quartz, again, has everywhere been cut by plutonic injections of porphyritic trap, veins averaging perhaps two metres, with a north-south strike, and a dip of 75 degrees (mag.) west. If the capping were removed, the sub-surface would, doubtless, bear the semblance of a honeycomb.

The Jebel el-Abyaz is apparently the centre of the quartzose outcrop in North Midian (Madyan Proper). We judged that it had been a little worked by the ancients, from the rents in the reef that outcrops, like a castle-wall, on the northern and eastern flanks. There are still traces of roads or paths; while heaps, strews, and scatters of stone, handbroken and not showing the natural fracture, whiten like snow the lower slopes of the western hill base. They contrast curiously with the hard felspathic stones and the lithographic calcaires bearing the moss-like impress of metallic dendrites; these occur in many parts near the seaboard, and we found them in Southern as well as in Northern Midian. The conspicuous hill is one of four mamelons thus disposed in bird's-eye view; the dotted line shows the supposed direction of the lode in the Jibl el-Bayz, the collective name.

On the plain to the north of the Jebel el-Abyaz also, I found curdles of porphyritic trap, and parallel trap-dykes, cutting the courses of large-grained grey granite: as many as three outcrops of the former appeared within fourteen yards. This convinced me that the whole of the solid square, thirty kilometres (six by five), where the quartz emerges, is underlaid by veins and veinlets of the same rock. Moreover, I then suspected, and afterwards ascertained, that the quartz of the Jibl el-Bayz, as the Bedawin call this section, is not a local peculiarity. It everywhere bursts, not only the plain between the sea and the coast-range, but the two parallels of mountain which confine it on the east. In fact, throughout our northern march the Arabs, understanding that its object was "Mar," the generic name for quartz,[EN#23] brought us loads of specimens from every direction. Nothing is easier than to work the purely superficial part. A few barrels of gunpowder and half a dozen English miners, with pick and crowbar, suffice. Even our dawdling, feckless quarrymen easily broke and "spelled" for camel loading some six tons in one day.

Our short se'nnight was not wasted; yet I had an uncomfortable feeling that the complication of the country called for an exploration of months and not hours. Every day some novelty appeared. The watercourses of the Ghts or coast-range were streaked with a heavy, metallic, quartzose black sand which M. Marie vainly attempted to analyze. We afterwards found it in almost every Wady, and running north as far as El-'Akabah; whilst, with few exceptions, all our washings of red earth, chloritic sand, and bruised stone, yielded it and it only. It is apparently the produce of granite and syenite, and it abounds in African Egypt. I was in hopes that tungsten and titaniferous iron would make it valuable for cutlery as the black sand of New Zealand. Experiments in the Citadel, Cairo, produced nothing save magnetic iron with a trace of lead. But according to Colonel Ross, the learned author of "Pyrology, or Fire Chemistry,"[EN#24] it is iserine or magnetic ilmenite, titaniferous iron-sand, containing eighty-eight per cent. of iron (oxides and sesquioxides), with eleven per cent. of titanic acid.

The Arabs brought in fine specimens of hematite and of copper ore from Wady Gharr or Ghurr, six miles to the south of camp. Here were found two water-pits in a well-defined valley; the nearer some ten miles south-west of the Jebel el-Abyaz, the other about two miles further to the north-west; making a total of twelve. About the latter there was, however, no level ground for tents. A mile and a half walking almost due north led to a veinlet of copper 30 metres long by 0.30 thick, with an east-west strike, and a dip of 45 degrees south. This metal was also found in the hills to the south. Crystalline pyroxene and crystallized sulphates of lime apparently abound, while the same is the case with carbonate of manganese, and other forms of the metal so common in Western Sinai. Briefly, our engineer came to the conclusion that we were in the very heart of a mining region.

We made a general reconnaisance (December 27th) of a place whence specimens of pavonine quartz had come to hand. Following the Wady 'Ifriy round the north and east of the White Mountain, we fell into the Wady Simkh (of "Wild Sumach"), that drains the great gap between the Pinnacles and the Buttresses of the 'Urnub-Tihmah section. After riding some two miles, we found to the south-east fragments of dark, iridescent, and metallic quartz: they emerge from the plain like walls, bearing north-south, with 36 degrees of westing and a westward dip of 15 degrees to 20 degrees—exactly the conditions which Australia seeks, and which produced the huge "Welcome Nugget" of Ballarat. They crop out of the normal trap-dyked grey granite, and select specimens show the fine panach lustre of copper. M. Marie afterwards took from one of the geodes a pinch of powder weighing about half a gramme, and cupelled a bright dust-shot bead weighing not less than two centigrammes. Without further examination he determined it to be argentiferous, when it was possibly iron or antimony. On the other hand, the silver discovered in the Grand Filon by so careful and conscientious an observer as Gastinel Bey, and the fact that we are here on the same line of outcrop, and at a horizon three hundred feet lower, are reassuring.

This vein, which may be of great length and puissance, I took the liberty of calling the "Filon Husayn," from the prince who had so greatly favoured the Expedition. Here we had hit upon the Negros,[EN#25] or coloured quartzose formations of Mexico, in which silver appears as a sulphure; and we may expect to find the Colorado, or argillaceous, that produces the noble metal in the forms of chlorure, bromure, and iodure. The former appears everywhere in Midian, but our specimens are all superficial, taken ciel ouvert. To ascertain the real value and the extent of the deposits required exposure of the veins at a horizon far lower than our means and appliances allowed us to reach. If the rock prove argentiferous I should hope to strike virgin silver in the capillary or aborescent shape below. Above it, as on the summit of the Jebel el-Abyaz, and generally in the "Mar" hills and hillocks of North Midian, the dull white quartz is comparatively barren; showing specks of copper; crystals of pyrites, the "crow-gold" of the old English miner, and dark dots of various metals which still await analysis.

Thus, I would divide the metalliferous quartzes of this North-Midianite region into two chief kinds: those stained green and light blue, whose chief metallic element is copper, with its derivatives; and the iridescent Negro, which may shelter the Colorado. In South Midian the varieties of quartz are incomparably more numerous, and almost every march shows a new colour or constitution.

About the Jebel el-Abyaz, as in many mining countries, water is a serious difficulty. The principal deposit lies some three miles east of the camping ground in a Nakb or gorge, El-Asaybah, offsetting from the great Fiumara, "El-Simkh;" and apparently it is only a rain-pool. Throughout Midian, I may say, men still fetch water out of the rock. M. Philipin, whilst pottering about this place, saw two Beden (ibex) with their young, which suggests a permanent supply of drink.[EN#26]

However that may be, Norton's Abyssinian pumps, for which I had vainly applied at Cairo, would doubtless discover the prime necessary in the Wadys, many of the latter being still damp and muddy. Moreover, the crible continue grilles filtrantes, the invention of MM. Huet and Geyler, introduced, we are told, into the mechanical treatment of metals, a principle which greatly economizes fluid. Founded upon the fact that sands of nearly the same size, but of different densities, when mixed in liquid and subjected to rapid vertical oscillation, range themselves by order of weight, the heavier sinking and not allowing passage to lighter matter, the new sieve offers the advantages of a single and simple instrument, with increased facility for treating poor "dirt." Finally, as I shall show, the country is prepared by nature to receive a tramway; and the distance to the sea does not exceed fourteen miles, liberally computed.[EN#27]

Either the rain-water affected the health of the party, or it suffered from the excessive dryness and variations of the atmosphere, eight to nine hundred feet above sea-level (aner. 29.10), ranging in the tents between 92 degrees by day and 45 degrees at night, a piercing, killing temperature in the Desert. Moreover, the cold weather is mostly the unwholesome season in hot lands, and vice vers: hence the Arab proverb, Harrat el-Jebel, wa l Bard-h ("The heat of the hills and not their cold"). Old Haji Wali lost his appetite, complained of indigestion, and clamoured to return home; Ahmed Kaptn suffered from Sulb ("lumbago") and bad headache; whilst Lieutenant Yusuf was attacked by an ague and fever, which raised the mouth thermometer to 102 degrees—103 degrees, calling loudly for aconite. These ailments affected the party more or less the whole way, but it was not pleasant to see them begin so soon. When our work of collecting specimens—three tons from the Jebel el-Abyaz, and three from the Filon Husayn—was finished, I resolved upon returning to the coast and treating our loads at the Sharm water. We reached the valley mouth on December 30th, and we greatly enjoyed the change from the harshness of the inland to the mildness of the seaboard air.

We stayed at Sharm, much disliking its remarkably monotonous aspect, for another week, till January 7, 1878. Yule, "the wheel," despite the glorious tree-logs and roaring fires, had been a failure at the White Mountain. The Dragoman had killed our last turkey, and had forgotten to bring the plum-pudding from El-Muwaylah: there was champagne, but that is not the stuff wherewithal to wash down tough mutton. New Year's Day, on the other hand, had all the honours. Its birth was greeted with a flow of whisky-punch, wherein wine had taken the place of water; and we drank the health of his Highness, the Founder of the Expedition, in a bottle of dry Mumm. The evening ended with music and dancing, by way of "praying the Old Year out and the New Year in." Mersl, the Boruji, performed a wild solo on his bugle; and another negro, Ahmed el-Shinnwi, played with the Ni or reed-pipe one of those monotonous and charming minor-key airs—I call them so for want of a word to express them—which extend from Midian to Trafalgar, and which find their ultimate expression in the lovely Iberian Zarzuela.[EN#28] The boy Husayn Gennah, a small cyclops in a brown felt calotte and a huge military overcoat cut short, caused roars of laughter by his ultra-Gaditanian style of dancing. I have also reason to suspect that a jig and a breakdown tested the solidity of the plank table, while a Jew's harp represented Europe. In fact, throughout the journey, reminiscences of Mabille and the Music Halls contrasted strongly with the memories of majestic and mysterious Midian. And, to make the shock more violent, some friend, mal salsus, sent me copies of the cosmopolitan Spectator and the courteous Mayfair, which at once became waste paper for Bedawi cartridges.

Our Rosh h Shanah ("New Year's Day") was further distinguished by the discovery of a vein and outcrop of metalliferous quartz, about half an hour's walk, and bearing nearly east (80 degrees mag.) from camp. We followed the Wady Sharm, and found above its "gate" the masonry-foundation of a square work; near it lay the graves of the Wild Men, one with the normal awning of palm-fronds honoris caus. There were signs of stone-quarrying, and at one place a road had been cut in the rock. Leaving on the north the left side of the watercourse, with its rushes (Scirpus), and huge-headed reeds (Arundo donax), its dates and Daums—the two latter often scorched and killed by the careless Bedawi—we struck into a parallel formation, the Wady el Wuday, bone-dry and much trodden by camels. Arrived at the spot, we found that the confused masses of hill subtending the regular cliff-line of the old coast, are composed of grey granite, seamed with snowy quartz, and cut by the usual bands of bottle-coloured porphyritic trap, which here and there becomes red. Some of the heights are of greenish-yellow chloritic felspar, well adapted for brick-making. The surface of the land is scattered with fragments of white silex and fine red jasper, banded with black oligistic iron: this rock, close, hard, and fine enough to bear cutting, appears everywhere in scatters and amongst the conglomerates. Only one fossil was picked up, a mould so broken as to be quite useless.

We also followed out M. Marie's find, to which he had been guided by a patch of red matter, conspicuous on the road from Tiryam to Sharm. For forty minutes we skirted the seaward face of the old cliff, a line broken by many deep water-gashes and buttressed by Goz, or high heaps of loose white sand. We then turned eastwards or inland, ascended a Nakb ("gorge"), and saw, as before, the corallines and carbonates of lime altered, fused, scorified, and blackened by heated injections; the grey granite scored with quartz veins, running in all rhumbs; and the porphyritic trap forming crests that projected from the sands. The cupriferous stone struck east-west, with a dip to the south; the outcrops, visible without digging, measured fifteen to twenty metres long, by one to one and a half in breadth.

New Year's Day also restored to us the pup "Pij." When quite a babe, it had walked up to me in the streets of Cairo, evidently claimed acquaintanceship, and straightway followed me into Shepheard's, where; having a certain sneaking belief in metempsychosis, I provided it with bed and board. During our third march to the White Mountain, being given to violent yelps, which startled both mules and camels, the small thing had been left to walk, and had apparently made friends with an Arab goatherd. After nine days' absence without leave, "Pij" reappeared, with dirty rags tied round its bony back and wasted waist, showing an admirable skeleton, and making the most frantic demonstrations of joy. The loss of the poor little brute had affected all our spirits: we thought that the hyenas and the ravens had seen the last of it; and it received a warm welcome home.

M. Lacaze, unlike the rest, took a violent fancy for the Wady Sharm: the water-scenery enchanted him. His sketches were almost confined to the palm-growth, and to the greenery so unexpected in arid Midian, where, according to the old and exploded opinion, Moses wrote the Book of Job. The idea of Arabia is certainly not associated with flowing rills, and waving trees, and rustling zephyrs. Every morning I used to awake surprised by the song of the Naiad, the little runnel whimpling down its bed of rushes, stone, and sand; and the response of the palms making music in the land-breeze.

Finally, on New Year's Day, Lieutenant Amir, guided by Shaykh Furayj, and escorted by soldiers and miners, made a three days' trip to the Wady 'Urnub. There he surveyed a large isolated "Mar," or quartz-hill, some twenty-two to twenty-five direct miles south-east of the main outcrop; thus giving a considerable extent to the northern mining-focus. This feature is described as being four or five times larger than the Jebel el-Abyaz (proper); and the specimens of quartz and grey granite proved it to be of the same formation. It showed a broken outline, with four great steps or dykes, which had apparently been worked. In the basal valleys, and spread over the land generally, was found a heavy yellow sand, calcareous and full of silex: the guide called it Awwal Hism (the "Hism frontier").

Our travellers returned by a parallel line, southerly and more direct. In the Wady 'Urnub, the Ma'zah of the Salmt clan received them with apparent kindness, inwardly grumbling the while at their land being "spied out;" and they especially welcomed Furayj, who, being a brave soldier, is also noted as a peacemaker. All the men were armed, and wore the same dress as the Huwaytt; like these, they also breed camels and asses—that is, they are not cow-Arabs. Certain travellers on the Upper Nile have distributed the Bedawin into these two groups; add horse-Arabs and ass-Arabs, and you have all the divisions of the race as connected with the so-called "lower animals." About three hours (= eleven miles) from Sharm camp, some pyramids of sand were pointed out in the Wady Rtiyah: the Bedawin call one of them the Goz et-Hannn ("Moaning Sand-heap"). They declare that when the Hajj-caravan passes, or rather used to pass, by that way, before the early sixteenth century, when Sultn Selim laid out his maritime high-road, a Naubah ("orchestra") was wont to sound within its bowels. This tale, which, by-the-by, is told of two other places in Midian, may have been suggested by the Jebel el-Nks ("Bell Mountain") in Sinai-land; but as the Arabs perform visitation and sacrifice to the "Moaning-heap," the superstition probably dates from ancient days. Ruins are also reported to exist in the Jebel Fa's, the southern boundary of the 'Urnub valley; and, further south, in the Jebel el-Harb, I was told by some one whose name has escaped me, of a dolmen mounted upon three supports. Lieutenant Amir also brought copper ore from the Wady 'Urnub, and from the Ras Wady el-Mukhbir specimens of a metal which the Arabs use as a kohl or collyrium. It proved, however, iron, not antimony; and the same mistake has been made in the Sinaitic Peninsula.

At Wady Sharm we rigged up, under the superintendence of M. Philipin, a trough and a cradle for washing the black sands, the pounded quartz of the Jebel el-Abyaz, and the red sands; these latter had shown a trace of silver (1/10000) to the first Expedition. We mixed it with mercury and amalgamed it in goatskins; the men moved them to and fro; but, of course, the water evaporated, and the mass speedily became dry. The upper or superficial white yielded only, as far as our engineer could judge, a little copper and bright knobs of pyrites. The Negros, or iridized formations, of the "Filon Husayn" on a lower horizon, gave the dubious result already alluded to. All the experiments were conducted in the rudest way. Of course, a quantity of metal may have escaped notice; and a fair proportion of the powdered stone was reserved for scientific treatment in Europe.

During our first trip we had found, upon the right jaw of the Wady Sharm, a ruined village of workmen, probably slaves, whose bothans measured some twelve feet by eight. They differ from the Nawmis, or "mosquito-huts," as the word is generally translated, only in shape—the latter are circular, with a diameter of ten feet—and they perfectly resemble the small stone hovels in the Wady Mukattab, which Professor Palmer ("Desert of the Exodus," p. 202) supposes to have been occupied by the captive miners and their military guardians. This time we ascended the coralline ridge which forms the left jamb. At its foot a rounded and half degraded dorsum of stiff gravel, the nucleus of its former self, showed a segment of foundation-wall, and the state of the stone suggested the action of fire. Possibly here had been a furnace. The summit also bears signs of human occupation. The southern part of the buttress-crest still supports a double concentric circle with a maximum diameter of about fifteen feet; the outside is of earth, apparently thrown up for a rampart behind a moat, and the inside is of rough stones. Going south along the dorsum, we found remains of oval foundations; a trench apparently cut in the rock, pottery often an inch and more thick, and broken handmills made of the New Red Sandstone of the Hism. Finally, at the northernmost point, where the cliff-edge falls abruptly, with a natural arch, towards the swamp, about one kilometre broad at the Bb, we came upon another circle of rough stones. We were doubtful whether these rude remains were habitations or old graves; nor was the difficulty solved by digging into four of them: the pick at once came upon the ground-rock. Hitherto these ruins have proved remarkably sterile; the only products were potsherds, fragments of hand-mills, and a fine lump of white marble (Rukhm), supposed to come from the Jebel el-Lauz.

Amongst our followers was a "Kzi of the Arabs," one Jabr bin 'Abd el-Nabi, who is a manner of judge in civil, but not in criminal matters. Before the suit begins the plaintiff, or his surety, deposits a certain sum in coin, corn, or other valuables, and lays his damages at so much. The defendant, if inclined to contest the claim, pays into court the disputed amount, and the question is settled after the traditional and immemorial customs of the tribe. This man, covetous as any other disciple of Justinian, was exceedingly anxious to obtain the honorarium of a Shaykh, and he worked hard to deserve it. Shortly before our departure from Sharm, he brought in some scoriae and slag, broken and streaked with copper—in fact, ekvolades. They are thinly scattered over the seaward slope of the left jaw, where the stone nowhere shows a trace of the mineral in situ. As, however, the Expedition had found native copper in three places, more or less near the Jebel el-Abyaz, it was decided that the ore had been brought from the interior.

We were again much puzzled concerning the form of industry which gave rise to such a large establishment as Sharm. Agriculture was suggested and rejected; and we finally resolved that it was a branch-town that supplied ore to the great smelting-place and workshop of the coast, 'Aynnah, and possibly carbonate of lime to serve for flux.

The distance along the winding Wady, between the settlement and the sea westward, where the watercourse ends in sand-heaps, is seven to eight miles, and the coast shows no sign of harbour or of houses. About three miles, however, to the northwest is the admirable Bay of 'Aynu'nah, unknown to the charts. Defended on both sides by sandspits, and open only between the west and the north-west, where reefs and shoals allow but a narrow passage, its breadth across the mouth from east to west measures at least five thousand metres, and the length inland, useful for refuge, is at least three thousand. At the bottom of this noble Lmn, the Kolpos so scandalously abused by the ancients, are three sandy buttresses metalled with water rolled stones, and showing traces of graves. Possibly here may have been the site of an ancient settlement. The Arabs call the southern anchorage, marked by a post and a pit of brackish water, El-Musaybah or Musaybat Sharm. Its only present use seems to be embarking bundles of rushes for mat-making in Egypt. The north-eastern end of the little gulf is the Gd (Jd), or Mers of El-Khuraybah, before described as the port of 'Aynu'nah.

At the Musaybah I stationed our tender, the Sambk El-Musahhil, which carried our heavy goods, specimens by the ton; rations and stores; forge, planks, and crowbars. The sailors lost no time in showing their rapacity. Every day they dunned us for tobacco; and when we made a counter-demand for the excellent fish which was caught in shoals, they simply asked, "What will you pay for it?" I imprudently left my keg of specimen-spirits on board this ignoble craft, and the consequence was that it speedily became bone-dry. The Musaybah bight is a direct continuation of the Wady el-Mellh, which, joining that of El-Maka'dah, runs straight up to the Jebel el-Abyaz and to the Filon Husayn. These metalliferous quartzes cannot be further from the coast than a maximum distance of fourteen miles, and the broad, smooth watercourse, with its easy gradients, points it out as the site of the future tramway. I should prefer a simpler form of the "Pioneer Steam Caravan or Saddleback-Railway System," patented by Mr John L. Haddan, C.E., formerly of Damascus.[EN#29] He recommends iron as the best material for the construction; and the cost, delivered at Alexandria, would not exceed 1200, instead of 3000 to 20,000 per kilometre, including the rolling stock. As the distance from the port is nothing, 300 per kilometre would be amply sufficient for "fixing up;" but I should reduce the price to 500 for the transport of some 50 tons per diem. By proper management of the rails or the main rail, it would be easy for trained camels to draw the train up the Wady; and the natural slope towards the sea would give work only to the brake where derailments are not possible.

At Sharm we saw the crescent, when the Englishmen turned their money in their pockets, and the Egyptian offficers muttered a blessing upon the coming moon. Every day we waxed more weary of the place; possibly the memories of the first visit were not pleasant. Many in camp still suffered; and an old Bedawi, uncle to Shaykh 'Alayan, died and was buried at 'Aynnah. The number of servants also made us uncomfortable. The head Dragoman, whose memory was confined to his carnet, forgot everything; and, had we trusted to him, half the supplies would have returned to Suez, probably for the benefit of his own shop at Zagzig. I soon found his true use, and always left him behind as magazine-man, storekeeper, and guardian of reserve provisions. He was also a dangerous, mischief-making fellow; and such men always find willing ears that ought to know better. Petros, the Zante man, was the model of a tipotenios (an "anybody"), who seemed to have been born limp, without bones or brains. He was sent back as soon as possible to Cairo. The worst point of these worthies was, that they prevented, for their own reasons, the natives working for us; while they preferred eternal chatter and squabbles to working themselves. So the Greek element was reduced to George the cook, a short, squat, unwashed fellow, who looked like a fair-Hercules out of luck; who worked like three, and who loudly clamoured for a revolver and a bowie-knife. His main fault, professionally speaking, was that he literally drenched us with oil till the store happily ran out. His complexion was that of an animated ripe olive, evidently the result of his own cookery. His surprise when I imperatively ordered plain boiled rice, instead of a mess dripping with grease; and when told to boil the fish in sea water and to serve up the bouillon, was high comedy. Doubtless he has often, since his return, astounded his "Hellenion" by describing our Frankish freaks and mad eccentricities.

The stationary camp also retained Lieutenant Yusuf and MM. Duguid and Philipin, with thirteen soldiers and sixteen miners. The six camels were placed under Gabr, Kzi el-'Orbn; and all the stay-behinds were charged with washing the several earths, with scouring the country for specimens, and with transporting sundry tons of the black sand before mentioned. Old Haji Wali, probably frightened by the Arabs, and maddened by the idea that, during his absence in the thick of the cotton season, the Fellahs of Zagzig would neglect to pay their various debts, began to "malinger" with such intensity of purpose, that I feared lest he would kill himself to spite us. The venerable Shylock, who ever pleaded poverty, had made some 300 by lending a napoleon, say, on January 1st, which became a sovereign on February 1st; not to speak of the presents and "benevolences" which the debtor would be compelled to offer his creditor. So he departed for El-Muwaylah, whence some correspondent had warned him that a pilgrim boat was about to start; declaring that he was dying, and trotting his mule as hard as it would go, the moment a safe corner was turned. He stayed two days on board the gunboat, and straightway returned to Egypt and the cotton season:—we had the supreme satisfaction, however, to hear that he had gone through the long quarantine at Tor. Yet after our return he reproached me, with inimitable coolness and effrontery, for not having behaved well to him.

On the morning of January 7th, a walk of two hours and twenty minutes (= seven miles) northwards, and mostly along the shore of the noble "Musaybat Sharm," transferred us to well-remembered 'Aynnah. The sea in places washed over slabs of the fine old conglomerates which, in this country, line the banks and soles of all the greater Wadys: these are the Cascalho of the Brazil, a rock which is treated by rejecting the pebbles and by pounding the silicious paste. The air was softer and less exciting than that of Sharm; and, although the vegetation was of the crapaud mort d'amour hue—here a sickly green, there a duller brown than April had showed—the scene was more picturesque, the "Gate" was taller and narrower, and the recollection of a happy first visit made me return to it with pleasure. Birds were more abundant: long-shanked water-fowl with hazel eyes; red-legged rail; the brown swallow of Egypt; green-blue fly-catchers; and a black muscivor, with a snowy-white rump, of which I failed to secure a specimen. We also saw the tern-coloured plover, known in Egypt as Domenicain and red kingfishers. The game species were fine large green mallard; dark pintail; quail, and red-beaked brown partridge with the soft black eye.

New formations began to develop themselves, and the sickly hues of the serpentines and the chlorites, so rich in the New World, appeared more charming than brow of milk or cheek of rose.[EN#30] There were few changes. A half-peasant Bedawi had planted a strip of barley near the camping place; the late floods had shifted the course of the waters; more date-trees had been wilfully burned; a big block of quartz, brother to that which we had broken, had been carried off; and where several of the old furnaces formerly stood, deep holes, dug by the "money-hunter," now yawned. I again examined the two large fragments of the broken barrage, and found that they were of uncut stone, compacted with fine cement, which contained palm-charcoal.

At 'Aynnah we gave only one day to work. While M. Lacaze sketched the views, we blasted with gunpowder more than half charcoal the Ma'dan el-Fayrz ("turquoise mine"), as the Arabs called it, on the right side of the Wady. The colour and texture were so unlike the true lapis Pharanitis that we began to suspect, and presently we ascertained from the few remaining fragments, it had been worked for copper,—the carbonates and the silicates which characterize Cyprus. Presently good specimens of the latter were brought to us from the Jebel el-Far by a Bedawi pauper, 'Ayd of the Tagaygt-Huwaytt tribe. These half-naked shepherds and goatherds, who know every stone in the land, are its best guides; not the Shaykhs, who, as a rule, see little or nothing outside their tents. From our camp the direction, as reported by Ahmed Kaptn, was 102 degrees (mag.), and the distance three miles. I afterwards sent Lieutenant Yusuf from El-Muwaylah to make a detailed plan.[EN#31]

We also dug in an old pit amongst the Christian graves to the south-east of the camp, and below the left jamb of the "Gate." Here also the Bedawin had been at work; and, when unable to work deep enough, they told us wonderful tales of an alabaster slab, which doubtless concealed vast treasures. In Arabia, as in Africa, one must look out for what there is not, as well as for what there is. After spending a morning in sinking a twelve-feet shaft, we came upon a shapeless coralline-boulder, which in old times had slipped from the sea-face of the cliff to the left of the valley. I ascended this height, and saw some stones disposed by the hand of man; but there were no signs of a large slave-miner settlement like that on the other side of the Bb.

In the afternoon Mr. Clarke led a party of quarrymen across the graveyards to El-Khuraybah, the seaport of 'Aynnah, and applied them to excavating the floor of a cistern and the foundations of several houses; a little pottery was the only result. It was a slow walk of forty minutes; and thus the total length of the aqueducts would be three miles, not "between four and five kilometres." I had much trouble and went to some expense in sending camels to fetch a "written stone" which, placed at the head of every newly buried corpse, is kept there till another requires it. It proved to be a broken marble pillar with a modern Arabic epitaph. In the Gd el-Khuraybah, the little inlet near the Gumruk ("custom-house"), as we called in waggery the shed of palm-fronds at the base of the eastern sandspit, lay five small Sambks, which have not yet begun fishing for mother-of-pearl. Here we found sundry tents of the Tagaygt-Huwaytt, the half Fellahs that own and spoil the once goodly land; the dogs barked at us, but the men never thought of offering us hospitality. We had an admirable view of the Tihmah Mountains—Zahd, with its "nick;" the parrot-beak of Jebel el-Sht; the three perpendicular Pinnacles and flying Buttresses of Jebel 'Urnub; the isolated lump of Jebel Fs; the single cupola of Jebel Harb; the huge block of Dibbagh, with its tall truncated tower; the little Umm Jedayl, here looking like a pyramid; and the four mighty horns of Jebel Shrr.

I left 'Aynnah under the conviction that it has been the great Warshah ("workshop") and embarking-place of the coast-section extending from El-Muwaylah to Makn; and that upon it depended both Wady Tiryam and Sharm, with their respective establishments in the interior. Moreover, the condition of the slag convinced me that iron and the baser metals have been worked here in modern times, perhaps even in our own, but by whom I should not like to say.



Chapter III. Breaking New Ground to Maghir Shu'ayb.



On January 9th we left 'Aynnah by the Hajj-road, and passed along the Quarry Hill visited during my first journey: the crest has old cuttings and new cuttings, the latter still worked for Bedawi headstones. The dwarf pillar with the mysterious cup is reflected by the Nubians, who hollow out the upper part of the stela to a depth of eight or ten inches without adding any ornament. Hence, perhaps, the Sawahli custom of the inserted porcelain-plate.

After issuing from the stony and sandy gorge which forms the short cut, we regained the Hajj-road, and presently sighted a scene readily recognized. Fronting us, the northern horizon was formed by the azure wall of Tayyib Ism,[EN#32] the "Mountain of the Good Name," backed by the far grander peaks of Jebel Mazhafah: the latter rises abruptly from the bluer Gulf of El-Akabah, and both trend to their culminating points inland or eastward. On our right followed the unpicturesque metalliferous heap of Jebel Zahd or 'Aynnah Mountain, whose Brche de Roland seems to show from every angle; its chocolate-coloured heights contain, they say, furnaces and "Mashghal," or ateliers, where the Mar ("quartz") was worked for ore. In places it is backed by the pale azure peaks of Jebel el-Lauz. This "Mountain of Almonds" is said to take its name from the trees, probably bitter, which flourish there as within the convent-walls of St. Catherine, Sinai. They grow, I was told, high up in the clefts and valleys; and here, also, are furnaces both above and below. Of its white, sparkling, and crystallized marble, truly noble material, a tombstone was shown to me; and I afterwards secured a slab with a broken Arabic inscription, and a ball apparently used for rubbing down meal. The Lauz appears to be the highest mountain in Northern Midian-land; unfortunately, it is to be reached only vi Sharaf, two long stations ahead, and I could not afford time for geographical research to the prejudice of mineralogical. Its nearer foot-hill is the Jebel Khulayf; and this feature contains, according to the Bedawin, seven wells or pits whose bottom cannot be seen. Between the "Almond Block" and its northern continuation, Jebel Munfah, we saw a gorge containing water, and sheltering at times a few tents of the 'Amrt Arabs; in the same block we also heard of a Sarbt or rock said to be written over.

The regular cone of El-Makl' ends the prospect in the north-eastern direction. Looking westward, we see the ghastly bare and naked Secondary formation, the Rughm of the Bedawin, not to be confounded with Rukhm ("alabaster or saccharine marble"). We afterwards traced this main feature of the 'Akabah Gulf as far south as the Wady Hamz. It is composed of the sulphates of lime—alabaster, gypsum, and the plaster with which the Tertiary basin of Paris supplies the world; and of the carbonates of lime—marble, chalk, kalkspar, shells, and eggs. The broken crests of the Jibl el-Hamr, the red hills backing Makn,[EN#33] and the jagged black peaks of their eastern parallel, the Kalb el-Nakhlah, look like plutonic reefs or island-chains emerging from the Secondary sea. The latter, whose bleached and skeleton white is stained, here and there, by greenish-yellow sands, chlorite and serpentine, stands boldly out from the chaos of purpling mountains composing Sinai, and ending southwards in the azure knobs of three-headed Tirn Island. The country, in fact, altogether changed: quartz had disappeared, and chlorite had taken its place.

We passed the night at El-'Usaylah, a Ghadir (or "hollow") without drainage, which the sinking of water cakes with mud and covers with an irregular circle of salsolaceous trees, a patch of dark metallic green. This "'Usaylah" is eaten by camels, but rejected by mules. Here our post reached us from Suez on the seventh day, having started on the 2nd inst. A dollar was offered to the Bedawi, who eyed the coin indignantly, declaring that it ought to be a ginni (guinea). I had also given him some tobacco, and repented, as usual, my generosity.

Next day we finished the last and larger part of the second pilgrim-stage from El-Muwaylah. Our Arabs had been "dodging;" and, much disappointed about converting a two days' into a three days' march, they punished us by feeding their camels on the road, and by not joining us till the evening. As before, there was no game till we approached the springs; yet tufts and scatters of tamarisks, Samur (Inga unguis) and Ark (Salvadora), looked capable of sheltering it. And now, beyond the level and monotonous Desert, we began to see our destination;—palms and tufty trees at the mouth of a masked Wady. This watercourse runs between a background of reddish-brown rock, the foot-hills and sub-ranges of the grand block, "El-Znah," to the north; and a foreground of pale-yellow, stark-naked gypsum, apparently tongue-shaped. Above the latter tower two sister-quoins of ruddy material, the Shigdawayn, to which a tale hangs.

Presently we fell into and ascended the great Wady 'Afr, which begins in the Hism, or Red Region, east of the double coast-range. After receiving a network of Secondary valleys that enable it to flow a torrent, as in France, every ten to twelve years, it falls into the Mnat el-'Aynt, a little port for native craft, which will presently be visited. We left this Wady at a bend, some two hundred metres wide, called the "Broad of the Jujube," from one of the splendid secular trees that characterize North Midian. Near the camping-ground we shall find another veteran Zizyphus, whose three huge stems, springing from a single base, argue a green old age. Here both banks of the Fiumara are lined with courses of rough stone, mostly rounded and rolled boulders, evidently the ruins of the water-conduits which served to feed the rich growth of the lower 'Afa'l. The vegetation of the gorge-mouth developed itself to dates and Daums, tamarisks and salsolace, out of which scuttled a troop of startled gazelles. We turned the right-hand jamb of the "Gate," and found ourselves at the water and camping-ground of Maghir Shu'ayb.

The general appearance of the station-basin is novel, characteristic, and not without its charms, especially when the sunset paints the plain with the red, red gold, and washes every barren peak with the tenderest, loveliest rosy pink. Under an intensely clear sapphire-coloured sky rises a distant rim of broken and chocolate-coloured trap-hills, set off by pale hillocks and white flats of gypsum, here and there crystallized by contact with the plutonics. The formation mostly stands up either in stiff cones or in long spines and ridges, whose perpendicular wall-like crests are impossible to climb. The snowy cliffs rest upon shoulders disposed at the "angle of rest," and the prevailing dull drab-yellow of the base is mottled only where accidental fracture or fall exposes the glittering salt-like interior. The gashes in the flank made by wind and rain disclose the core—grey granite or sandstone coloured by manganese. The greater part of the old city was built of this alabaster-like[EN#34] material. When new, it must have been a scene in fairy-land; Time has now degraded it to the appearance and the consistence of crumbling salt. The quoin-shaped hills of the foreground, all uptilted and cliffing to the north, show the curious mauve and red tints of the many-coloured clays called in the Brazil Tau. Even the palms are peculiar. Their tall, upright crests of lively green fronds, their dead-brown hangings, and their trunks charred black by the careless Bedawi, form a quaint contrast with the genteel, nattily dressed, and cockneyfied brooms of Egypt and the Hejaz. And that grandeur may not be wanting to the view, on the east rise the peak and pinnacles of the Almond Mountain (Jebel el-Lauz), whilst northwards the Jebel el-Za'nah, a huge dome, forms the horizon.

This place, evidently the capital of Madyan Proper, is the which Ptolemy (vi. 7) places amongst his "Mesogeian towns" in north lat. 28 degrees 15 minutes;[EN#35] and it deserves more than the two pages of description which Ruppell bestowed upon it.[EN#36] We will notice its natural features before proceeding to the remains of man. Here the Wady 'Afr takes the name of "El-Bad." Sweeping from west to east, it is deflected to a north-south line, roughly speaking, by the gate of the Shigdawayn, twin-hills standing nearly east and west of one another. Now become a broad, well-defined, tree-dotted bed, with stiff silt banks, here and there twenty to twenty-five feet high, it runs on a meridian for about a mile, including the palm-orchard and the camping-ground. It then turns the west end of the Jebel el-Safr, a mass of gypsum on the left bank, and it bends to the east of south, having thus formed a figure of Z. After escaping from the imprisoning hills, the Fiumara bed, now about three-quarters of a mile broad, is bisected longitudinally by a long and broken lump of chloritic or serpentine sandstone; and rises in steps towards the right bank, upon which the pilgrims camp. Reaching the plain, the Wady flares out wildly, containing a number of riverine islands, temporary, but sometimes of considerable size. It retains sufficient moisture to support a clump of palms—that which we saw from afar;—it bends to the south-east, and, lastly, it trends seaward.

The "Water of Bada'" springs from the base of the hill El-Safr, oozing out in trickling veins bedded in soft dark mud. It can be greatly increased by opening the fountains, and economized by a roofing of mat: we tried this plan, which only surprised the unready Arab. After swinging to the left bank and running for a few yards, it sinks in the sand; yet on both sides there are signs of labour, showing that, even of late years, the valley has seen better days. Long leats and watercourses have been cut in the clay, and are still lined with the white-flowered "Rijlah," whose nutritive green leaf is eaten, raw or boiled, by the Fellahs of Egypt: the wild growth, however, is mostly bitter. On both sides are little square plots fenced against sheep and goats by a rude abattis of stripped and dead boughs, Jujube and acacia. Young dates have been planted in pits; some are burnt and others are torn; for the Bedawi, mischievous and destructive as the Cynocephalus, will neither work nor allow others to work. The 'Ushash or frond-and-reed huts, much like huge birds'-nests, are scattered about in small groups everywhere except near the water. Wherever a collection of bones shows a hyena's lair, the hunters have built a screen of dry stone.

In fact, Maghir Shu'ayb was spoken of as an Arab "Happy Valley." But its owners, the Mas'd, a spiritless tribe numbering about seventy tents, are protgs of the Tagaygt. This Huwayti clan is on bad terms with Khizr and 'Brahim bin Makbl; and the brother Shaykhs of the 'Imrn, recognized by the Egyptian Government, claim the land where they have only the right of transit. Bedawi clans and sub-tribes always combine against stranger families; but when there is no foreign "war," they amuse themselves with pilling and plundering, sabring and shooting one another. I believe that the palms were roasted to death by the 'Imrn, although the Shaykhs assured me that the damage was done this year, by a careless Mas'di when cooking his food. The tribe appears to be Egypto-Arab, like the Huwayta't and the Ma'zah, having congeners at Ghazzah (Gaze) and at Ras el-Wady, near Egyptian Tell el-Kebir. Consequently Rppell is in error when he suspects that die Musaiti are ein Judenstamm. The unfortunates fled towards the sea and left the valley desolate about seven months ago. Their Shaykh is dead, and a certain Agl bin Muhaysin, a greedy, foolish kind of fellow, mentioned during my First Journey, aspires to the dignity and the profit of chieftainship. He worried me till I named a dog after him, and then he disappeared.

The ruins, of large extent for North Midian, and equal to those of all the towns we have seen put together, begin with the palm-orchard on the left bank. The Jebel el-Safr shows the foundations of what may have been the arx. It is a double quoin, the taller to the south, the lower to the north, and both bluff in the latter direction. The dip is about 45 degrees; the upper parts of the dorsa are scatters of white on brown-yellow stone; and below it, where the surface has given way, appear mauve-coloured strata, as if stained by manganese. Viewed in profile from the west, the site of El-Muttali'[EN#37], as the Arabs call the hauteville, becomes a tall, uptilted wedge; continued northwards by the smaller feature, and backed by a long sky-line, a high ridge of plaster, pale coloured with glittering points.

This isolated "Yellow Hill," a "horse" in Icelandic parlance, rising about two hundred feet above the valley-sole, is separated by a deep, narrow gorge from the adjacent eastern range. The slopes, now water-torn and jagged, may formerly have declined in regular lines, and evidently all were built over to the crest like those of Syrian Safet. The foundations of walls and rock-cut steps are still found even on the far side of the eastern feature. The knifeback is covered with the foundations of what appears to be a fortified Laura or Palace; a straight street running north-south, with 5 degrees west (mag.). It serves as base for walls one metre and a half thick, opening upon it like rooms: of these we counted twenty on either side. At the northern end of the "horse," which, like the southern, has been weathered to a mere spur, is a work composed of two semicircles fronting to the north and east. A bastion of well-built wall in three straight lines overhangs the perpendicular face of the eastern gorge: in two places there are signs of a similar defence to the south, but time and weather have eaten most of it away. The ground sounds hollow, and the feet sink in the crumbling heaps: evidently the whole building was of Rughm (gypsum); and in the process of decay it has become white as blocks of ice, here and there powdered with snow.

On the narrow, flat ledge, between the western base of this Safr and the eastern side of the Bada' valley, lie masses of ruin now become mere rubbish; bits of wall built with cut stone, and water-conduits of fine mortar containing, like that of the Pyramids, powdered brick and sometimes pebbles. We carried off a lump of sandstone bearing unintelligible marks, possibly intended for a man and a beast. We called it "St. George and the Dragon," but the former is afoot—possibly the Bedawin stole his steed. There was a frustum or column-drum of fine white marble, hollowed to act as a mortar; like the Moslem headstone of the same material, it is attributed to the Jebel el-Lauz, where ancient quarries are talked of. There were also Makrkah ("rub-stones") of close-grained red syenite, and fragments of the basalt handmills used for quartz-grinding. Part of a mortar was found, made of exceedingly light and porous lava.

South-east of the hauteville falls in the now rugged ravine, Khashm el-Muttal, "Snout of the high" (town). It leads to the apex of the coralline formations, scattered over with fragments of gypsum, here amorphous, there crystalline or talc-like, and all dazzling white as powdered sugar. Signs of tent foundations and of buildings appear in impossible places; and the heights bear two Burj or "watchtowers," one visible afar, and dominating from its mamelon the whole land. The return to the main valley descends by another narrow gorge further to the south-east, called Sha'b el-Darak, or "Strait of the Shield:" the tall, perpendicular, and overhanging walls, apparently threatening to fall, would act testudo to an Indian file of warriors. High up the right bank of this gut we saw a tree-trunk propped against a rock by way of a ladder for the treasure-seeker. The Sha'b-sole is flat, with occasional steps and overfalls of rock, polished like mirrors by the rain-torrents; the mouth shows remains of a masonry-dam some fourteen feet thick by twenty-one long; and immediately below it are the bases of buildings and watercourses.

Walking down the left bank of the great Wady, and between these secondary gorges that drain the "Yellow Hill," we came upon a dwarf mound of dark earth and rubbish. This is the Siyghah ("mint and smiths' quarter"), a place always to be sought, as Ba'lbak and Palmyra taught me. Remains of tall furnaces, now level with the ground, were scattered about; and Mr. Clarke, long trained to find antiques, brought back the first coins picked up in ancient Midian. The total gathered, here and in other parts of Maghir Shu'ayb, was 258, of which some two hundred were carried home untouched; the rest, treated with chloritic and other acids, came out well. One was a silver oval which may or may not have been a token. Eleven were thick discs, differing from the normal type; unfortunately the legends are illegible. The rest, inform bits of green stuff, copper and bronze, were glued together by decay, and apparently eaten out of all semblance of money until the verdigris of ages is removed.

All are cast like the Roman "as", before B.C. 217, and some show the tail. The distinguishing feature is the human eye; not the outa of Horus,[EN#38] so well known to those who know the Pyramids, but the last trace of Athene's profile. Two are Roman: a Nerva with S.C. on the reverse; and a Claudius Augustus, bearing by way of countermark a depressed oblong, of 20/100 by 14/100 (of inch), with a raised figure, erect, draped, and holding a sceptre or thyrsus. There is also a Constantius struck at Antioch. The gem of the little collection was a copper coin, thinly encrusted with silver, proving that even in those days the Midianites produced "smashers": similarly, the Egyptian miners "did" the Pharaoh by inserting lead into hollowed gold. The obverse shows the owl in low relief, an animal rude as any counterfeit presentment of the ever found in Troy. It has the normal olive-branch, but without the terminating crescent (which, however, is not invariably present) on the proper right, whilst the left shows a poor imitation of the legend (NH). The silvering of the reverse has been so corroded that no signs of the goddess's galeated head are visible. My friend, Mr. W. E. Hayns, of the Numismatic Society, came to the conclusion that it is a barbaric Midianitish imitation of the Greek tetradrachm, which in those days had universal currency, like the shilling and the franc. The curious bits of metal, which also bear the owl, may add to our knowledge of the Nabathaean coins, first described, I believe, by the learned Duc de Luynes.[EN#39]

Another interesting "find" was a flat-bottomed, thick-walled clay crucible of small size (2 10/16 inches high by 2 4/16 inches across the mouth), exactly resembling the article picked up at Hammt. The latter, however, contains a remnant of litharge, possibly showing that the old Egyptians worked the silver, which may have been supplied by the Colorado quartz.

I would here crave leave to make a short excursus to the ancient Ophirs of Egypt Proper, where, we are told by an inscription in the treasury of Ramses the Great (fourteen centuries before Christ), the gold and silver mines yielded per annum a total of 32,000,000 min = 90,000,000. Dr. H. Brugsch-Bey first drew attention to Hammt, where, as he had learned from Diodorus (i. 49—iii 12) and from the papyri, the precious metals had been extensively worked. The "Wells of Hama'ma't" lie between Keneh on the Nile and Kusayr (Cosseir) on the Red Sea; and the land is held by the Abbdah Arabs, who have taken charge, from time immemorial, of the rich commercial caravans. The formation of the country much resembles that of Midian; and the metalliferous veins run from northeast to south-west. In Arabia, however, the filons are of unusual size; in Africa they are small, the terminating fibrils, as it were, of the Asiatic focus; while the Dark Continent lacks that wealth of iron which characterizes the opposite coast.

By the courtesy of Generals Stone and Purdy I was enabled, after return to Cairo in May, 1878, to inspect the collection. Admirably arranged in order of place, and poor as well disposed, it is, nevertheless, useful to students; and it was most interesting to us. The only novelty is asbestos produced in the schist: the raw material is now imported by the United States, and used for a variety of purposes. It is said to exist in Mount Sinai; we found none in Midian, where the schist formations are of great extent, probably because we did not look for it. The collection was made by Colonel Colston; and Mr. L. H. Mitchell, a mining engineer attached to the Egyptian Staff, spent several weeks spalling sundry tons of quartz. After finding a speck of gold, the work was considered to be done. General Stone, however, sensibly deprecated any attempt to exploit the minerals: the country lacks wood and water, and the expense of camel-transport from Hammt to Kusayr, and thence in ships to Suez, would swallow up all the profits.

That Egypt was immensely rich in old days we know from several sources. Appian tells us that the treasury of Ptolemy Philadelphus contained 740,000 talents; and assuming with Ebers[EN#40] the Egyptian at half the ginetan, we have the marvellous sum of 83,250,000. According to Diodorus (i. 62), the treasury of Rhampsinit, concerning which Herodotus (ii. 121, 122) heard a funny story from his interpreter, contained 4,000,000 talents, equal to at least 450,000,000. This rich king's treasure-house has been found portrayed in the far-famed Temple of Medinat Hab: the mass of wealth, gold, silver, copper, and spices, is enormous; and, while the baser metals are in bars, the precious are stored in heaps, sacks, and vases.

The gold-mines of the old Coptos-plain, the modern Kobt, south of Keneh, are preserved to all time by the earliest known map. It has survived; whilst those of the Milesian Anaximander (B.C. 610- 547), of Hekataeus (ob. B.C. 4 76), also from Miletus and called the "Father of Geography" (Ebers), and of Ptolemy the Pelusian are irretrievably lost. A papyrus in the Turin Museum contains a plan of the mineral region spoken of in two stel, those of Radesiyyah and Kuban, describing the supply of drinking-water introduced into the desert between Kuban and the Red Sea. Chabas[EN#41] has published a coloured facsimile of this map: the gold-containing mountains are tinted red, and the words "Tu en nub" (Mons aureus) are written over them in hieratics.

The only modern gold-workings of Egypt are in the Mudriyyat (Nomos) of Famaka, the frontier town, better known as Fayzoghl from its adjacent heights. The washings were visited lately (March, 1878) by my enterprising friend, Dr. P. Matteucci, and M. Gessi. In old days this local Cayenne had a very bad name; convicts were deported here with a frightful mortality. It is still a station for galley-slaves, and it has a considerable garrison, but we no longer hear of an abnormal fatality. The surface was much turned over by the compulsory miners, and European geologists and experts were sent to superintend them; at last the diggings did not pay and were abandoned. But the natives do by "rule of thumb," despite their ignorance of mineralogy, without study of ground, and lacking co-ordination of labour, what the Government failed to do. They have not struck the chief vein' if any exist; but, during the heavy rains of the Kharif ("autumn") in the valley of the Tmt river, herds of slaves are sent yearly to wash gold, and they find sufficient to supply the only known coin—bars or ingots.

Beyond the Siyghah, the left bank is gashed by the ravines draining the south-eastern prolongation of the "Yellow Hill." Water cuts through this rotten formation of rubbish like a knife into cheese; forming deep chasms, here narrow, there broad, with walls built up, as it were, of fragments, and ready to be levelled by the first rains. The lines of street and the outlines of tenements can be dimly traced, while revetments of rounded boulders show artificial watercourses and defences against the now dried-up stream. The breadth of this, the eastern settlement, varies with the extent of the ledge between the gypsum-hills and the sandy Wady; the length may be a kilometre. The best preserved traces of crowded building end with the south-eastern spur of the Jebel el-Safr. Beyond them is a huge cemetery. The ancient graves are pits in the ground; a few still uncovered, the many yawning wide, and all of them ignoring orientation. Those of the moderns, on the contrary, front towards Meccah. The Bedawin of this country seem ever to prefer for their last homes the most ancient sites; they place the body in a pit, covered with a large slab or a heap of stones, but they never fill in the hollow, as is usual among Moslems, with earth. The arrangements suit equally well the hyena and the skull-collector; and thus I was able to make a fair collection of Bedawi crania.

At the south-eastern end of the outliers projected by the Jebel el-Safr, where a gentle slope of red earth falls towards the valley-bank, is the only group of building of which any part is still standing. The site may be old, but the present ruins are distinctly medival, dating probably from the days of the Egyptian "Mameluke" Sultans. Beginning from below and to the south-west is a Hauz, or "cistern," measuring twenty-six by nineteen and a half metres, with a depth of nine to ten feet. The material is cut sandstone, cemented outside with mortar containing the normal brick-crumbs and pebbles, and inside mixed with mud. At the north-eastern and south-western corners are retaining buttresses in two steps, exactly like those in the inland fort of El-Wijh; at the two other angles are flights of stairs, and the sole is a sheet of dried silt. To the south-east lies the remnant of a small circular furnace, and on the north-north-east a broken wall shows where stood the Bayt el-Saghir, or smaller reservoir. A narrow conduit of cut stone leads, with elaborate zigzags, towards two Sakiyah ("draw-wells") hollowed in the gypsum. The Southern, an oval of five metres ten centimetres, is much dilapidated; and its crumbling throat is spanned by a worn-out arch of the surrounding Secondary rock. Close to the north-west is the other, revetted with cut stone, and measuring six metres in diameter. It is an elaborate affair; with a pointed arch and a regular keystone, circular Sadd, or "walls for supporting the hauling-apparatus," and minor reservoirs numbering three. On a detached hillock, a few paces to the north, stands the Fort which defended the establishment. The short walls of the parallelogram measure fifteen metres forty centimetres; and the long, eighteen metres sixty centimetres: the gate, choked by ruins, leads to a small hall, with a masked entrance opening to the right. There is a narrow room under the stone steps to the west, and two others occupy the eastern side. This Fort is to be restored for the better protection of pilgrims; and shortly after our departure an Egyptian engineer, Sulayman Effendi, came from Suez to inspect and report upon it.

According to local modern tradition this scatter of masonry was the original site of the settlement, called after the builder Bir el-Sa'idni—"the Well of Sa'dn." For watering each caravan the proprietor demanded a camel by way of fee; at last a Maghrib, that is, a magician, refused to "part;" betook himself to the present camping ground, sank pits, and let loose the copious springs. The old wells then dried up, and the new sources gave to this section of the great Wady 'Afl its actual name, Wady el-Bad—"of the innovation," so hateful to the conservative savage. Hence Rppell's "Beden," which would mean an ibex.

On the opposite or right bank of the broad and sandy bed, the traces of ancient buildings extend to a far greater distance, at least to two kilometres. They have been a continuous line of forts, cisterns, and tenements, still marked out by the bases of long thick walls; the material is mostly gypsum, leprous-white as the skin of Gehazi. But here, and indeed generally throughout Midian, the furious torrents, uncontrolled during long ages by the hand of man, have swept large gaps in the masses of homestead and public buildings. Again the ruins of this section are distributable into two kinds—the City of the Living, and the City of the Dead.

The former, of considerable extent, hugs the watercourse, and crowns all the natural spurs that buttress the bed. Beginning from the north lie two blocks of building considerable in extent: the southern, called by the Arabs El-Malk, is a broken parallelogram. Further down stream the bank is a vast strew of broken pottery; and one place, covered with glass fragments, was named by our soldiers El-Khammrah—"the tavern" or "the hotel." As in ancient Etruria, so here, the people assemble after heavy rains to pick up what luck throws in the way. It is said that they often gather gold pieces, square as well as round, bearing by way of inscription "prayers" to the Apostle of Allah. Some of us, however, had a shrewd suspicion that the Tibr, or "pure gold-dust," is still washed from the sands, and cast probably in rude moulds.

Behind, inland or westward of this southern town, lies the City of the Dead. Unlike the pitted graveyard to the north-east, the cemetery is wholly composed of catacombs, which the Bedawin call Maghir ("caves") or Bbn ("doors"). The sites are the sides and mouths of four little branch-valleys which cut through the hillocks representing the Wady-bank. The northernmost is known as Wady el-Khurayk, because it drains a height of that name: the others bear the generic term Wady el-Safr, so called, like the hauteville hill, from the tawny-yellow colour of the rocks. The catacombs, fronting in all directions, because the makers were guided by convenience, not by ceremonial rule, are hollowed in the soft new sandstone underlying the snowy gypsum; and most of the faades show one or more horizontal lines of natural bead-work, rolled pebbles disposed parallelly by the natural action of water. In the most ruinous, the upper layer is a cornice of hard sandstone, stained yellow with iron and much creviced; the base, a soft conglomerate of the same material, is easily corroded; and the supernal part caves in upon the principle which is destroying Niagara. At each side of the doorways is a Mastabah ("stone bench"), also rock-hewn, and with triple steps. The door-jambs, which have hollowings for hinges and holes for bars, are much worn and often broken; they are rarely inclined inwards after the fashion of Egypt. A few have windows, or rather port-holes, flanking the single entrance. The peculiarities and the rare ornaments will be noticed when describing each receptacle; taken as a whole, they are evidently rude and barbarous forms of the artistic catacombs and tower-tombs that characterize Petra and Palmyra.

The "Maghir" may roughly be divided into four topical groups. These are—the northern outliers; the "Tombs of the Kings," so called by ourselves because they distinguish themselves from all the others; the "buttressed caves" (two sets); and the southern outliers. The first mentioned begin with a ruin on the right jaw of the Khurayk gorge: it is dug in strata dipping, as usual, from north-west to south-east; it faces eastward, and the entrance declines to the south. All external appearance of a catacomb has disappeared; a rude porch, a frame of sticks and boughs, like the thatched eaves of a Bulgarian hut, stands outside, while inside signs of occupation appear in hearths and goat-dung, in smoky roof, and in rubbish-strewn floor. Over another ruin to the west are graffiti, of which copies from squeezes and photographs are here given: there are two loculi in the southern wall; and in the south-eastern corner is a pit, also sunk for a sarcophagus. A hill-side to the south of this cave shows another, dug in the Tau or coloured sandstone, and apparently unfinished: part of it is sanded up, and its only yield, an Egyptian oil-jar of modern make, probably belonged to some pilgrim. Crossing the second dwarf gorge we find, on the right bank, a third large ruin of at least fourteen loculi; the hard upper reef, dipping at an angle of 30 degrees, and striking from north-west to southeast, fell in when the soft base was washed away by weather, and the anatomy of the graves is completely laid bare. Higher up the same Wady is a fourth Maghrah, also broken down: the stucco-coating still shows remnants of red paint; and the characters **—possibly Arab "Wasm," or tribe-marks—are cut into an upright entrance-stone.

The precipitous left bank of the third gorge contains the three finest specimens, which deserve to be entitled the "Tombs of the Kings." Of these, the two facing eastward are figured by Rppell (p. 220) in the antiquated style of his day, with fanciful foreground and background.[EN#42] His sketch also places solid rock where the third and very dilapidated catacomb of this group, disposed at right angles, fronts southwards. Possibly the faades may once have been stuccoed and coloured; now they show the bare and pebble-banded sandstone.

The southernmost, which may be assumed as the type, has an upright door, flanked by a stone bench of three steps. Over the entrance is a defaced ornament which may have been the bust of a man: in Rppell it is a kind of geometrical design. The frontage has two parallel horizontal lines, raised to represent cornices. Each bears a decoration resembling crenelles or Oriental ramparts broken into three steps; the lower set numbers eight, including the half ornaments at the corners, and the higher seven. The interior is a mixture of upright recesses, probably intended for the gods or demons; and of horizontal loculi, whose grooves show that they had lids. There is no symmetry in the niches, in the sarcophagi, or in the paths and passages threading the graves. The disposition will best be understood from the ground-plans drawn by the young Egyptian officers: their sketches of the faades are too careless and incorrect for use; but the want is supplied by the photographs of M. Lacaze.

Above these three "Tombs of the Kings" are many rock-cavities which may or may not have been sepulchral. Time has done his worst with them. We mounted the background of a quoin-shaped hill by a well-trodden path, leading to the remnants of a rude Burj ("watch-tower"), and to a semicircle of dry wall, garnished with a few sticks for hanging rags and tatters. The latter denotes the Musallat Shu'ayb, or praying-place of (prophet) Jethro; and here our Sayyid and our Shaykh took the opportunity of applying for temporal and eternal blessings. The height at the edge of the precipice which, cliffing to the north, showed a view of our camp and of Yub and Shu'sh' Islands, was in round numbers 450 feet (aner. 29.40—28.94). From this vantage-ground we could distinctly trace the line of the Wady Makn, beginning in a round basin at the western foot of the northern Shigd Mountain and its sub-range; while low rolling hills, along which we were to travel, separated it from the Wady Bada'-Afl to the south.

Two other important sets of catacombs, which I will call the "buttressed caves," are pierced in the right flank of the same gorge, at the base of a little conical hill, quaintly capped with a finial of weathered rock. The material is the normal silicious gravel-grit, traversed and cloisonn by dykes of harder stone. Beginning at the south, we find a range of three, facing eastward and separated from one another by flying buttresses of natural rock. No. 1 has a window as well as a door. Next to it is a square with six open loculi ranged from north to south. No. 3 shows a peculiarity—two small pilasters of the rudest (Egyptian?) Doric, the only sign of ornamentation found inside the tombs; a small break in the south-western wall connects it with the northernmost loculus of No. 2. Furthest north are three bevel-holes, noting the beginning of a catacomb; and round the northern flank of the detached cone are six separate caves, all laid waste by the furious northern gales.

The second set is carved in the bluff eastern end of an adjoining reef that runs away from the Wady; it consists of four sepulchres with the normal buttresses. They somewhat resemble those of the Kings, but there are various differences. No. 2 from the south is flanked by pilasters with ram's-horn capitals, barbarous forms of Ionic connected by three sets of triglyphs: the pavement is of slabs; there is an inner niche, and one of the corners has apparently been used as an oven. On a higher plane lies a sunken tomb, with a deep drop and foot-holes by way of ladder; outside it the rocky platform is hollowed, apparently for graves. The other three facades bear the crenelle ornaments; the two to the north show double lines of seven holes drilled deep into the plain surface above the door, as if a casing had been nailed on; while the northernmost yielded a fragmentary inscription on the southern wall. These are doubtless the "inscribed tablets on which the names of kings are engraved," alluded to in the Jihan-num of Haji Khahfah.[EN#43] Rounding the reef to the north, we found three catacombs in the worst condition: one of them showed holes drilled in the faade.

The southern outliers lie far down the Wady 'Afl, facing east, and hewn in the left flank of a dwarf gulley which falls into the right bank not far from the site called by our men "the tavern." The group numbers three, all cut in the normal sandstone, with the harder dykes which here stand up like ears. The principal item is the upper cave, small, square, and apparently still used by the Arabs: in the middle of the lintel is a lump looking like the mutilated capital of a column. The two lower caves show only traces.

There is a tradition that some years ago a Frank (Rppell?), after removing his Arab guides, dug into the tombs, and found nothing but human hair. Several of the horizontal loculi contained the bones of men and beasts: I did not disturb them, as all appeared to be modern. The floors sounding hollow, gave my companions hopes of "finds;" but I had learned, after many a disappointment, how carefully the Bedawi ransack such places. We dug into four sepulchres, including the sunken catacomb and the (southern) inscribed tomb. Usually six inches of flooring led to the ground-rock; in the sarcophagi about eight inches of tamped earth was based upon nine feet of sand that ended at the bottom. The only results were mouldering bones, bits of marble and pottery, and dry seeds of the Kaff Maryam, the Rose of Jericho (Anastatica), which here feeds the partridges, and which in Egypt supplies children with medicine, and expectant mothers with a charm. As the plant is bibulous, opening to water and even to the breath, it is placed by the couch, and its movement shows what is to happen. The cave also yielded specimens of bats (Rhinopoma macrophyllum), with fat at the root of their spiky tails.

I have described at considerable length this ruined Madima, which is evidently the capital of Madyan Proper, ranking after Petra. In one point it is still what it was, a chief station upon the highway, then Nabat, now Moslem, which led to the Ghor or Wady el-'Arabah. But in all others how changed! "The traveller shall come; he that saw me in my beauty shall come: his eyes shall search the field; they shall not find me."



Chapter IV. Notices of Precious Metals in Midian—the Papyri and the Medival Arab Geographers.



In my volume on "The Gold-Mines of Midian," the popular Hebrew sources of information—the Old Testament and the Talmud—were ransacked for the benefit of the reader. It now remains to consult the Egyptian papyri and the pages of the medival Arab geographers: extracts from the latter were made for me, in my absence from England, by the well-known Arabist, the Rev. G. Percy Badger.[EN#44] I will begin with the beginning.

Dr. Heinrich Brugsch-Bey, whose "History of Egypt"[EN#45] is the latest and best gift to Egyptologists, kindly drew my attention to an interesting passage in his work, and was good enough to copy for me the source of his information, tile Harris Papyrus (No. 1) in the British Museum.

The first king of the twentieth Dynasty, born about B.C. 1200, and residing at Thebes, was Rameses III., whose title, Ramessu pa-Nuter (or Nuti), "Ramses the god," became in the hands of the Greeks Rhampsinitos. This great prince, ascending the throne in evil days, applied himself at once to the internal and external economy of his realm; he restored the caste-divisions, and carried fire and sword into the lands of his enemies. He transported many captives to Egypt; fortified his eastern frontier; and built, in the Gulf of Suez, a fleet of large and small ships, in order to traffic with Pun and the "Holy Land,"[EN#46] and to open communication with the "Incense-country" and with the wealthy shores of the Indian Ocean.

"Not less important," says our author (p. 594), "for Egypt, which required before all things the copper applied to every branch of her industry, was the sending of commissioners, by land (on donkey back!) and by sea, to explore and exploit the rich cupriferous deposits of 'Athka (in the neighbourhood of the 'Akabah Gulf?). This metal, with the glance of gold, was there cast in brick-shape, and was transported by sea to the capital.

"The king also restored his attention to the treasures of the Sinaitic Peninsula, which had excited the concupiscence of the Egyptians since the days of King Senoferu[EN#47] (B.C. 3700). Loaded with rich presents for the sanctuary of the goddess Hathor, the protectress of Mafka-land, chosen employs were despatched on a royal commission to the peninsula, for the purpose of supplying the Pharaoh's treasury with the highly prized blue-green copper-stones (Mafka, Turkisen?[EN#48])."

These lines were published by Dr. Brugsch-Bey before he had heard of my discoveries of metals and of a modern turquoise-digging in the Land of Midian. He had decided that "'Athka" lay to the east of Suez, chiefly from the insistence laid upon the shipping; sea-going craft would certainly not be required for a sail of three or four hours. Moreover, as I have elsewhere shown, Jebel 'Atakh, the "Mountain of Deliverance," at the mouth of the Wady Mus, was referred to the Jews at some time after the Christian era, and probably during the fourth and fifth centuries, when pilgrimages to the apocryphal Mounts Sinai became the fashion.

During the summer of 1877, Dr. Brugsch-Bey was kind enough to copy and to translate the original document, upon which he founded his short account of the "'Athka" copper-mines. I offer it to the reader in full.

The order of the alphabet is that adopted by Dr. Brugsch-Bey. It relies for the first letter upon the authority of Plutarch, who asserts that the Egyptian abecedarium numbered the square of five (twenty-five); and that it opened with ——, which also expresses the god Thoth;—this is the case with —— the leaf of some water-plant. The sequence of the letters has been suggested by a number of minor considerations: we begin with the vowels, and proceed to the labial, the liquids, and so forth.[EN#49]

The sense of the highly interesting inscription, in its English order, would be:—

"I have sent my commissioners to the land 'Athka; to the (those)[EN#50] great mines of copper (or coppers)[EN#51] which are in this place ('Athka); and their (i.e. the commissioners') ships[EN#52] were loaded, carrying them (the metals); while other (commissioners were sent and) marched on their asses. No! one never (ter-tot) had heard, since the (days of the olden) kings, that these (copper) mines had been found.[EN#53] The loads (i.e. of the ships and the asses) carried copper; the loads were by myriads for their ships, which went thence (i.e. from the mines) to Egypt. (After) happily arriving, the loads were landed, according to royal order, under the Pavilion,[EN#54] in form of copper- bricks;[EN#55] they were numerous as frogs (in the marsh),[EN#56] and in quality they were gold (Nub) of the third degree.[EN#57] I made them admired (by) all the world as marvellous things."

The following lines upon the subject of Midian are from the notes (p. 143) of Jacob Golius in "Alferganum" (small 4to. Amsterdam, 1669), a valuable translation with geographical explanations. Ahmad ibn Mohammed ibn Kathr el-Farghni derived his "lakab" or cognomen from the province of Farghn (Khokand), to the north-east of the Oxus; he wrote a work upon astronomy, and he flourished about A.H. 184 (= A.D. 800).

"Ibidem ( Madyan) Medjan sive Midjan, Antiqui nominis oppidum in Maris Rubri littore, sub 29 degrees grad. latitudine; ad ortum brumalem deflectens montis Sin extremitate: ubi fer site Ptolemi Modiana, haud dubi eadem cum Midjan. A Geographorum Orientalium quibusdam ad gyptum refertur; plerisq; omnibus ad Higiazam: quod merito et rect factum. Nullus enim est, qui Arabibus non annumeret Madianitas; et Sinam, qu Madjane borealior, montem Arabi facit D. Paulus Gal. iv. Midjan autem fuit Abrahami ex Kethura filius: unde tribus illa et ab hac urbs nomen habent. Quam quidem tribum coaluisse, sedibus ut puto et affinitate in unam cum Ismalitis, innuere videntur Geneseos verba. Nam conspirantibus in Josephi exitium fratribus dicuntur supervenisse Ismalitae; transivisse Midjanite; ipse v ditus ab Ismalitis. Ceterum urbem Midjan Arabes pro ea habent, qu in Corano vocatur ( Madnat Ksh): Xaib[EN#58] enim illis idem est, qui Jethro dicitur Exod. iii. cujus filiam Sipporam Moses uxor duxit, cum ex gpto profugisset in terram Midjan; ubi Jethro princeps erat et Sacerdos. Autonomosia illa Arabibus familiaris. Ita Hanoch ( Aknkh) appelatus, Abraham (El- Khall), Rex Saul ( Tlt), etc., licet eorundem propria etiam usurpentur nomina. Et in ipsis Sacris Libris non uno nomine hic Jethro designatur. Loci illius puteum[EN#59] Scriptores memorant fano circum extructo Arabibus sacrum, persuasis Mosem ibi Sipporam et sorores pastorum injuriis vindicasse; prout Exod., cap. ii., res describitur. Sed primis Muhammedici regni bellis universa fere, quae rune extabat, urbs vastata fuit."

El-Farghni is followed by the Imm Ab 'Abbs Ahmed bin Yhy bin Jbir, surnamed and popularly known as El-Balzur, who flourished between A.H. 232 and 247 (= A.D. 846 to 861), and wrote the Fut'h el-Buldn, or the "Conquests of Countries." His words are (pp. 13-14, M. J. de Goeje's edition; Lugduni Batavorum, 1866)—"It was related to me by Ab Abd el-Ksim bin Sallm; who said he was told by Ishk bin Isa, from Malk ibn Anas and from Rabat, who heard from a number of the learned, that the Apostle of Allah (upon whom be peace!) gave in feoff (Ikt'at) to Bill bin el-Hris el-Muzni, mines (Ma'din, i.e. of gold) in the district of Fur' (variant, Kur'). Moreover, it was related to me by Amr el-Nkid, and by Ibn Saham el-Antki (of Antioch), who both declared to have heard from El-Haytham bin Jaml el-Antki, through Hammd bin Salmah, that Ab Makn, through Ab Ikrimah Maul Bill bin el-Hris el-Muzni, had averred 'The Apostle of Allah (upon whom be peace!) enfeoffed the said Bill with (a bit of) ground containing a mountain and a (gold) mine; that the sons of Bill sold part of the grant to one 'Umar bin 'Abd el-'Azz, when a (gold) mine or, according, to others, two (gold) mines were found in it; that they said to the buyer, Verily we sold to thee land for cultivation, and we did not sell thee (gold) mining-ground; that they brought the letter of the Apostle (upon whom be peace!) in a (bound) volume: that 'Umar kissed it and rubbed it upon his eyes, and said, Of a truth let me see what hath come out of it (the mine) and what I have laid out upon it.' Then he deducted from them the expenses of working and returned to them the surplus. . . . And I was told by Musa'b el-Zubayri, from Malik ibn Anas, that the Apostle of Allah (upon whom be peace!) gave in feoff to Bill bin Hris mines in the district of Fara' (sic). There is no difference of opinion among our learned men on this subject, nor do I know any of our companions who contradicts (the statement) that the (gold) mine paid one-fourth per ten (= 2 1/2 per cent.) royalty (to the Bayt el-Ml, or Public Treasury). Musa'b further relates, from El-Zahri, that the (gold) mine defrayed the Zakt or poor-rate: he also said that the proportion was one-fifth (= 2 per cent.); like that which the people of El-Irk (Mesopotamia) take to this day from the (gold) mines of El-Fara' (sic), and of Nejrn, and of Zl-Marwah, and of Wady El-Kura[EN#60] and others. Moreover, the fifth is also mentioned by Safin el-Thauri, and by Ab Hanfah and Ab Ysuf, as well as by the people of El-'Irk."

Follows on my list the celebrated Murj el-Dahab, or "Meads of Gold," by El-Mas'di, who died in A.H. 346 (= A.D. 957), and whose book extends to A.H. 332 (= A.D. 943). Unable to find the translation of my friend Sprenger, I am compelled to quote from "Maoudi. Les Prairies d'Or," texte et traduction par C. Barbier de Meynard et Pavet de Courteille. Socit Asiatique, Paris, 1864, vol. iii. pp. 301-305.

"Les thologians ne sont pas d'accord sur la question de savoir quel peuple appartenait Chob (Shu'ayb), fils de Nawil, fils de Rawal, fils de Mour, fils d'Anka, fils de Madian, fils d'Abraham, l'ami de Dieu, quoiqu'il soit certain que sa langue tait l'arabe. Les uns pensent qu'il appartenait aux races arabes teintes, aux nations qui ont disparu, quelque une de ces gnrations passes dont nous avons parl. Suivant d'autres, il s'agirait ici des descendants d'el-Mahd, fils de Djandal, fils de Yssob, fils de Madian, fils d'Abraham, dont Chob etait frre par la naissance. De cette race sortit un grand nombre de rods qui s'taient disperss dans des royaumes contigus les uns aux autres ou spare's. Parmi ces rods il faut distinguer ceux qui taient nomms Aboudjed, Hawaz, Houti, Kalamoun, afas et Kourichat,[EN#61] tous, comme nous venons de le dire, fils d'el-Mahd, fils de Djandal. Les lettres de l'alphabet sont reprsentes prcisment par les noms de ces rois, o l'on retrouve les vingt-quatre lettres sur lesquelles roule l'Aboudjed.[EN#62] Il a e'te' dit beaucoup d'autres choses propos de ces lettres, comme nous l'avons fait remarquer dans cet ouvrage; mais il n'entre pas dans notre sujet de rapporter ici tous les systmes contradictoires imagins pour l'expliquer la signification des lettres.[EN#63] Aboudjed fut roi de la Mecque et de la partie du Hdjaz qui y confine. Hawaz et Houti rgnrent conjointement dans le pays de Weddj (El-Wijh), qui est le territoire de Tayif, et la portion du Nedjd qui lui est contigue. Kalamoun exerait la suzerainet sur le royaume de Madian; il y a mme des auteurs qui pensent que son autorit s'tendait conjointement sur tous les princes et les pays que nous venons de nommer. Le chtiment du jour de la nue (Koran, xxvi. 189) eut lieu sous le re'gne de Kalamoun. Chob appelant ces impies la pnitence, ils le traitrent de menteur. Alors il les mena,ca du chtiment du jour de la nue, la suite de quoi une porte du feu du ciel fut ouverte sur eux. Chob se retire, avec ceux qui avaient cru, dans l'endroit connu sous le nom d'el Akah, qui est un fourr dans la direction de Madian. Cependant, lorsque lcs incrdules sentirent les effets de la vengeance cleste, et que, consums par une chaleur terrible, ils comprirent enfin la vrit, ils se mirent la recherche de Chob et de ceux qui avaient cru en lui. Ils les trouvrent abrits sous un nuage blanc, doucement rafraichi par le zphire, et ne ressentant en rien les atteintes de la douleur. Ils les chassrent de cet asile, s'imaginant qu'ils y trouveraient eux-mmes un refuge contre le flau qui les poursuivait. Mais Dieu changea cette nue en un feu qui se prcipita sur leurs ttes. Mountassir, fils d'el-Moundir el-Mdni, a parl de ce peuple et a dplor son triste sort dans des vers o il dit:

"Les rois des enfants de Houti et de afas, qui vivaient dans l'opulence, et ceux de Hawaz, qui possdaient des palais et des appartements somptueux,

"Rgnaient sur la contre du Hdjaz, et leur beaut tait semblable celle des rayons du soleil ou l'clat de la rune;

"Ils habitaient l'emplacement de la maison sainte, ils adoucissaient les moeurs de leurs compatriotes et gouvernaient avec illustration et honneur....

"Rien de plus curieux que l'histoire de ces rois, le r'cit de leurs guerres, de leurs actes, de la manire dont ils s'emparrent de ces contres et tablirent leur domination, apres en avoir extermin les premires possesseurs. Ceux-ci taient des peuples dont nous avons parl dans nos prcdents ouvrages, en traitant ce sujet; nous appelons l'attention dans ce livre sur nous premiers crits, et nous engageons le lecteur les consulter."

The next in order of seniority is the well-known Idrs (A.H. 531 = A.D. 1136). Dr. Badger's Arabic copy not being paged, he has forwarded to me extracts from the French translation by M. P. Amade Jaubert (Paris, 1836), having first compared them with the original:—

Tome 1 p. 5: "De cette mer de la Chine drive encore le golfe de Colzoum (Kulzum), qui commence Bab el-Mandeb,[EN#64] au point ou se termine la mer des Indes. Il s'tend au nord, en inclinant un peu vers l'occident, en longeant les rivages occidentales de l'Iemen, le Thma, l'Hdjaz, jusqu'au pays de Madian, d'Aila (El-'Akabah), et de Faran; et se termine la ville de Colzoum, dont il tire son nom."

P. 142: "Les districts fortifis, dependents de la Mecque, sont . . . Ceux qui sont sous la dpendance de Mdine sont . . . Madyan."

P. 328: "Pour aller de Misr (Cairo) ' Yetrib (sic pro Yathrib), on passe par les lieux suivants, Alah (Aylah) Madian," etc.

P. 333: "Sur les bords de la mer Colzoum est la ville de Madian (in orig. Madiyan) plus grande qui Tabouk (Tabk), et le puits ou Mose (sur qui soit le salut!) abreuva le troupeau de Jethro (E1Shu'ayb). On dit que ce puits est (maintenant) sec [Note at foot: Je lis Mu'attilah comme porte le MS. B., et non Mu'azzamah,[EN#65] leon donnee par le MS. A.]; et qu'on a lev audessus une construction. L'eau ncssaire aux habitants provient de sources. Le nom de Madiyan (sic) de'rive de celui de la tribu laquelle Jethro appartenait. Cette ville offre trs peu de ressources et le commerce y est misrable."

The following notice of Madyan is taken from the Kitb el-Buldn ("Book of Countries"),[EN#66] by Ahmed ibn Ab Ya'kb bin Wdhih, surnamed El-Ya'kb and El-Ktib (the writer); according to the Arabic colophon it was completed on the morning of Saturday, Shawwl 21, A.H. 607 (= A.D. 1210). The author gives (p. 129, T. G. J. Juynboll, Lugduni Batavorum, 1861) a description of the route from Misr (Egypt, here Cairo) to Meccah. The first ten stages are—1. Jubb el-'Umayrah; 2. El-Kerkirah (variant, Karkrah); 3. 'Ajrd, the well-known fort on the direct Suez-Cairo line; 4. Jisr el-Kulzum, where the Gulf was crossed; and, lastly, six Desert marches (Marhil) to Aylah.[EN#67] The latter station is described as a fine city upon the shore of the Salt Sea, the meeting-place of the pilgrim-caravans from Syria,[EN#68] Egypt, and the Maghrib (West Africa). It has merchandise in plenty, and its people are a mixed race (Akhlt min el-Ns).[EN#69] Here also are sold the fine cloaks called Burdu habaratin, and also known as the Burd of the Apostle of Allah[EN#70] (upon whom be peace!). He resumes, "And from Aylah you march to Sharaf el-Baghl, and from the latter to Madyan, which is a large and populous city, with abundant springs and far-flowing streams of wholesome water; and gardens of flower-beds. Its inhabitants are a mixed race (Akhlt min el-Ns).[EN#71] The traveller making Meccah from Aylah takes the shore of the Salt Sea, to a place called 'Aynn (variant, 'Uyn, plural of 'Ayn, an eye of water, a fountain): here are buildings and palm clumps, and seeking-places (Matalib: see Lane for the authorities), in which men search for gold." Dr. Badger draws my attention to the last sentence, which seems also to have been noticed by Sprenger (Alt. Geog. p. 32).[EN#72]