We now bent to the south-west. Here the surface is much cut and broken by sandy Wadys, dotted with a few straggling plants: to our right was a Goz or inclined arenaceous bank, where the south wind had sifted the sand from the gravel, disposing the former in the hollows, and the latter on the crest of the ripples. Presently we reached a strange formation which, seen from the east, appears a huge vein, red and rusty, beginning close to the sea, and crossing the body of the island from south to north, while a black cone is so disposed that its southern front simulates a crater. A narrow gorge opens upon a semicircular hollow lined with ochraceous or ferruginous matter; in fact, part of the filon, which sends off fibrils in all directions. The confusion of formations was startling. The floor was here of white petrosilex, there of grey granite, variegated with squares and lozenges, drops and pineapples, red, green, neutral tinted, and disposed by oxides of iron and copper in natural designs that looked artificial. Scattered over the bed of the upper ravine beyond the hollow, were carbonates of lime, ruddy brown and chocolate-hued, here a pudding-stone, there porous like basalt: the calcareous sulphates were both amorphous and crystalline, the latter affected by contact with plutonic matter. The walls of the gash showed a medley of clay breccias, disposed in every imaginable way; and divided by horizontal veins of heat-altered quartz. A few paces further led to the head of the ravine, where a tumble of huge rocks, choking the bed, showed that the rain-torrents must at times be violent.

Meanwhile, Mr. Clarke and Lieutenant Amir had walked to the large central harbour, hoping there to hit upon sweet water and some stray Hutaym fishermen, who would show us what we wanted. They did not find even the vestige of a hut. The two exploring parties saw only three birds in the "Isle of Birds," and not one of the venomous snakes mentioned at "Tehran" by Wellsted (II. ix.), and described as "measuring about thirty inches, of a slender form, with black and white spots." We also utterly failed to discover the sulphur which was once abundant and the naphtha which, according to the same authority, was produced here in considerable quantities, and was used "by the Arab mariners to pay their boats."

The evening was exceptionally fine and calm; and we expected on the morrow (February 11th) a quiet return to El-Muwaylah. Yet a manner of presentiment induced me to summon the engineer and his native assistants, and to promise the latter a liberal "bakhshsh," if by hard work at the boiler all night, and by rigging up the ship's pump instead of a donkey-engine, they could steam off at dawn.

Unexpectedly, about four a.m., a violent sandy and misty wester began to blow; and all fancied that we had set sail to the south. Quite the contrary! The engine was still under repair. The Mukhbir was being tossed and rolled by the inshore set, and the sequel is quickest told by an extract from my "Penny":—

"Written in sight of Death. Wind roaring furiously for victims: waves worse. No chain can stand these sledge-hammer shocks. Chain parts,[EN#140] and best sheet-anchor with it. Bower and kedge anchors thrown out and drag. Fast stranding broadside on: sharp coralline reef to leeward, distant 150 yards. Sharks! Packed up necessaries. Sambk has bolted, and quite right too! Engine starts some ten minutes before the bump. Engineer admirably cool; never left his post for a moment, even to look at the sea. Giorgi (cook) skinning a sheep: he has been wrecked four times, and don't care. Deck-pump acting poorly. Off in very nick of time, 9.15 a.m. General joy, damped by broadside turned to huge billows. Lashed down boxes of specimens on deck, and wore round safely. Made for Sinfir, followed by waves threatening to poop us. Howling wind tears mist to shreds. Second danger worse than first. Run into green water: fangs of naked rock on both sides within biscuit-throw; stumps show when the waves yawn. Nice position for a band-box of old iron! With much difficulty slipped into blue water. Rounded south end of spit, and turned north into glorious Sinfir Bay. Safe anchorage in eight fathoms. Anchor down at 10:15 a.m., after one hour of cold sweat. Distance seven miles on chart, nine by course: Mukhbir never went so fast; blown like chaff before wind. Faces cleared up. All-round shaking of hands; El-Hamdu li'llhi,' followed by a drink. Some wept for joy."

The engine, or rather the engineer, had saved us: as the saying is, it was touch and go—the nearest thing I ever did see. Had the rotten old boiler struck work for five minutes when we were clearing out of Trn, or steaming along Sinfir shore, nothing could have kept the ship afloat. Those who behaved best, a fireman, a boy who crept into the combustion-chamber to clear it, and helmsman who, having been at Liverpool, spoke a little English, were duly "bakhshsh'd." The same reward was given by mistake to the boilermaker, Mohammed Sa'd Haddd, who had malingered, instead of working, through the night. At Suez he had the impudence to ask me for a Shahdah ("testimony") to his good character. On the whole the conduct of the crew was worthy of all praise.

In a decently equipped English steamer we should have laughed at this storm, and whistled for more wind; but the condition of the Mukhbir quite changed the case. The masts might have rolled out, or she might have sprung a leak at any moment. And supposing that we had escaped the crash upon the reef, the huge waves, and the schools of sharks, our situation would have been anything but pleasant. The Island of Trn, as has been shown, is a grisly scrap of desert: it has no sweet water; and its three birds would not long have satisfied thirty hungry men. It is far from the mainland; the storm, which lasted through two days, was too violent for raft or boat to live, and at so early a season native craft are never seen on these seas. Briefly, a week might have elapsed before our friends at El-Muwaylah, who were startled by the wildness of the wind, could have learned our plight, or could have taken measures to relieve the castaways.

Sinfir Island, which we have to thank for giving us hospitality on two occasions, consists mainly of a bay. Viewed by the norma verticalis, it is shaped like an ugly duckling, with an oval (Wellsted says a circular) body of high ground disposed north-east to south-west; and with head and neck drooping westward so as to form a mighty pier or breakwater. The watery plain within is out of all proportion to the amount of terra firma. The body-profile shows straight-backed heaps of gypsum, some two hundred feet high, which become quoin-shaped about the middle of the isle: these hillocks are connected by low strips of sand growing the usual vegetation, especially the pink Statice pruinosa.

Presently our Sambk, which had also lost chain and anchor before she could run out of the storm, appeared to the north-west of the bay; and a pilgrim-craft, bound for Suez, was our companion in good fortune. A party landed to examine Sinfir, which still shows signs of a junction with Trn. In days when the Secondary formation was an unbroken street, the whole segment of a circle, extending from Sharm Yhrr to northern Sinai, must have been dry land; these reefs and islands are now the only remnants. The islet itself seems lately to have been two: the neck and head are one, and the body is another; an evident sea-cliff marks the junction, and what appears like a Wady below it, is the upraised sea-bed of coralline. To the north-west, and outside this strip, lies the little port defended by a network of reefs, in which our Sambk had first taken refuge. The bay-shore bears traces of more than one wreck; and in the graveyard used by the native sailor, an open awning of flotsam and jetsam looks from afar like a tumble-down log-hut. The number of reefs and shoals shown by stripes of vivid green water promised excellent fishing, and failed to keep its promise.

At length, after a third wasted day, we managed, despite a new hole in the old boiler, to steam out of hospitable Sinfir at 6:30 a.m. on the auspicious Wednesday, February 13. The appearance of the Mukhbir must have been originale enough: her canvas had been fished out of the hold, but in the place of a mainsail she had hoisted a topsail. We passed as close as possible to the islet-line of Secondary formation, beginning with Shu'shu', the wedge bluff-faced to south: the Palinurus anchored here in a small bight on the north-east side, between two reefs, and narrowly escaped being wrecked by a northerly gale. At 10:45 a.m. we were alongside of Barhkn, a double feature, lumpy and cliffy, connected by a low sandy isthmus: the eastern flank gives good shelter to native crafts. Lastly came Yub', the compound quoin, the loftiest of the group, upwards of 350 feet high, with its low-lying neighbour Wlih. These islets have classical names, as I have before mentioned,[EN#141] and appear once to have been inhabited: even at Yub', the least likely of all, we heard from several authorities of a deep rock-cut well, covered with a stone which the Arabs could not raise.

And now we were able to cast an intelligent glance in review of the scenes made familiar by our first or northern march. The surpassing purity of the transparent atmosphere, especially at this season, causes the land to look as near at twenty as at ten miles; and thus both distances, showing the horizon with the utmost distinctness, appear equally close to the ship. Beginning towards El-Akabah, the Jebel el-Znah behind Maghir Shu'ayb, and its mighty neighbour, the Jebel el-Lauz, form the horizon of mountains which are not the least amongst the giants. Southwards appear the Jibl el-Tihmah, the noble forms of the seaboard, the parallel chains noting the eastern boundary of Madyan (Proper); while behind them the Jibl el-Shafah, reduced to blue heads and fragments of purple wall, are evidently disposed on a far more distant plane.

As regards the Jibl el-Tihmah, I have registered ad nauseam the names of the eight several blocks into which, between El-Zahd north and El-Shrr south, the curtain, rising from a sea-horizon, seems to divide itself. Every one consulted gave me a new or a different term; and apparently seamen and landsmen have their separate nomenclature. Thus, the pilots call the Fs, Harb and Dibbagh blocks, Jibl el-Musaybah, Tiryam, and Dmah, after the Wadys and main valleys that drain them. The Bedawin, again, will name the whole block after the part most interesting to them: thus the tower-like formation characterizing Jebel Dibbagh was often called "Jebel el-Jimm," and even this, as will afterwards appear, was not quite exact.[EN#142]

We fired a gun off El-Muwaylah, where our camp, ranged in long line, looked clean and natty. At five p.m. we were once more at home in our old quarters, the Sharm Yhrr: the day's work had numbered fifty direct geographical miles between Sina'fir and El-Muwaylah, with five more to our dock.

Rsum

Our journey through Madyan Proper (North Midian) had lasted fifty-four days (December 19, 1877, to February 13, 1878). During nearly two months the Expedition had covered only 105 to 107 miles of ground: this, however, does not include the various by-trips made by the members, which would more than double the total; nor the cruise of two hundred miles round the Gulf of Akabah, ending at El-Muwaylah. The total of camels employed varied from 106 to 61, and their hire, including "bakhshsh" and all minor charges, amounted, according to Mr. Clarke, to 316 14s. 3d.

This section of North Midian may be described as essentially a mining country, which, strange to say of a province so near Egypt, has been little worked by the Ancients. The first Khedivial Expedition brought back specimens of free gold found in basalt, apparently eruptive, and in corundophyllite, which the engineer called greenstone porphyry: silver appeared in the red sands, in the chloritic quartz, and in the titaniferous iron of the Jebel el-Abayz; the value being 265 to 300 francs per ton, with traces in the scori. The second Expedition failed to find gold, but brought back argentiferous galena in copper-stained quartz, and possibly in the ochraceous red veins seaming the Secondary gypsum; with silicates and carbonates of copper: select specimens of the latter yielding the enormous proportion of forty per cent. In this northern region the great focus of metallic deposit appears to lie between north lat. 28 40' and 27 50'; that is, from the Jebel Tayyib Ism, north of Makn, to the southern basin which contains the Jebel el-Abyaz or "White Mountain." Its characteristics are the argentiferous and cupriferous ores, whereas in South Midian gold and silver were worked; and the parallelogram whose limits are assigned above, might be converted into a Northern Grant. Concerning the immense abundance of gypsum, and the sulphur which is suspected to be diffused throughout the Secondary formation, ample details have been given in the preceding pages.

The principal ruins of ancient settlements, and the ateliers, all of them showing vestiges of metal-working, numbered eight: these are, beginning from the south, Tiryam, Sharm, Aynnah, the Jebel el-Abyaz, Maghir Shu'ayb, Makn', Tayyib Ism, and El-Akabah. Maghir Shu'ayb, the Madima of Ptolemy, is evidently the ancient capital of the district. It was the only place which supplied Midianitish (Nabathan) coins. Moreover, it yielded graffiti from the catacombs; fragments of bronze which it will be interesting to compare by assay with the metal of the European prehistoric age; and, finally, stone implements, worked as well as rude.

I will end with a few words concerning the future industry of North Midian.

For the success of these mines the greatest economy will be necessary. The poorest ore can be treated on the spot by crushing and washing, where no expenditure of fuel is required. The richer stone, that wants roasting and smelting, would be shipped, when worth the while, from North Midian to Suez: there coal is abundant, and the deserted premises of Dussaud-Bey, belonging to the Egyptian Government, would form an excellent site for a great usine centrale. Finally, the richest specimens—especially those containing, as many do, a medley of metals—would be treated with the least expenditure, and the greatest advantage, at Swansea or in other parts of England, where there are large establishments which make such work their specialty.

The following analyses of the specimens brought home by the first Khedivial Expedition, were made at the Citadel, Cairo, by the well-known chemist, Gastinel-Bey, in conjunction with M. George Marie, the engineer attached to the Expedition:—

Analyses (Mm. Gastinel-bey and George Marie of Cairo) of Rocks Brought Home by the First Khedivial Expedition.

(All by Voie Sche.)

Gold (assay on 100 grammes)—

1. In basalt (lava?).

2. In serpentine. (None in white quartz.)

Silver—

1. In Filon Husayn, 1/1000 = 265 to 300 francs per ton (very good).

2. In red sands, 1/10,000 (= 20 francs per ton).

3. In scori, traces. (None in white quartz or in the black sands.)

Copper—

1. In Aynnah quartz, 4 1/2 per 100.

2. In Filon Husayn, 2 1/2 to 3.40 per cent. Filon Husayn = Titaniferous iron, 86.50 Silica, 10.10 Copper, 3.40.

3. In chloritic slate, 1.40 per cent. (Chloritic slate of Makn' = Silica, 90.50 Carbonate of lime, 5.60 Oxide of iron, 2.30 Copper, 1.40.)

Sulphur (Jebel el-Kibri't of El-Muwaylah)— 4 per cent. above. 9 ditto below.

Lead everywhere.

Calamine (zinc) very rich.



Part II.

The March Through Central and Eastern Midian.



Chapter IX.

Work in and Around El-Muwaylah.



We arrived at El-Muwaylah too late to meet the Hajj-caravan, which, home returning, had passed hurriedly through the station on February 9th. This institution has sadly fallen off from its high estate of a quarter of a century ago. Then commanded by an Amir el-Hajj—"Lord of the Pilgrimage"—in the shape of two Pashas (generals), it is now under the direction of a single Bey (colonel). The "True Believers," once numbering thousands, were reduced in 1877-78 to some eight hundred souls, of whom only eighty appeared at El-Muwaylah; and the peculiar modification of modern days is that the Mahmal is escorted only by paupers. Yet the actual number of the Hjis who stand upon Jebel Araft, instead of diminishing, has greatly increased. The majority prefer voyaging to travelling; the rich hire state-cabins on board well-appointed "Infidel" steamers, and the poor content themselves with "Faithful" Sambks. Indeed, it would seem that all the present measures, quarantines of sixty days (!) and detention at wretched Tor, comfortless enough to make the healthiest lose health, are intended to discourage and deter "palmers" from proceeding by land. If this course be continued, a very few years will see the venerable institution represented by only the Mahmal and its guard. The late Sa'id Pasha of Egypt once consigned the memorial litter per steam-frigate to Jeddah: the innovation saved Ghafr ("blackmail") to the Bedawin; but it was not approved of by the Moslem world.

The Hjis were so poor that they had nothing for barter or for sale. Happily, however, there was a farrier amongst them, and Lieutenant Yusuf took care that our mules were properly shod. M. Philipin had been a marchal ferrant, but a kick or two had left him no stomach for the craft. Our two fellow-travellers, with the whole camp, had set out from Makn on February 6th, and marched up the great Wady el-Kharaj. Along the eastern flank of the Jebel el-Fahst, the "Iron Mountain," they found many outcrops of quartz, a rock which appears sporadically all the way to the northern soufrire. In two places it was green-stained, showing copper, while in another hydrated oxide and chromate of iron (hematite)[EN#143] abounded. After a stage of four hours and twenty minutes they left the caravan, struck off to the west, accompanied by Shaykh Furayj, and reached their destination. Here, however, they met with accidents: the mules bolted, followed by the Shaykh's dromedary, and they were obliged to hurry off for fear of losing the caravan, now well ahead of them. Thus, when I had ordered Lieutenant Yusuf to make a detailed plan of the formation, he had spent exactly ten minutes on the spot, and he appeared not a little proud of his work.

This young officer was not a pleasant companion. He had doubtless received his orders, but he carried them out in a peculiarly disagreeable way, taking notes of all our proceedings under our eyes. Together with Lieutenant Amir, he began to make a collection of geology: both, being utterly innocent of all knowledge, imitated us in picking up specimens; mixed them together without notes or labels; and, on return to Cairo, duly presented them at the Citadel. This was all that was required. The papers were "written to" and reported as follows: "Closer examination has shown that the turquoises' brought to Cairo are merely malachite (!); and that the existence of any such quantity of gold as would pay for the working is, to say the least of it, very doubtful."[EN#144]

The whole camp, indeed, was seized with a mania for collecting: old Hji Wali again gathered bits of quartz, which he once more presented as gold-stone to his friends and acquaintances at Zagzig; and Anton, the dragoman, triumphantly bore away fragments bristling with mica-slate, whose glitter he fondly conceived to be silver.

Lieutenant Yusuf was presently despatched with three soldiers, three quarrymen, Jz, the Arab guide of a former visit, and eight camels, to bring back specimens of the copper silicate to the south of Aynnah, and to make a regular survey of the northern solfatara. He set out early on February 18th, and after twenty-one hours of caravan-marching reached the Jebel el-Fara'. Here the outcrop is bounded north by the Wady el-Fara', and south by the Wadys el-Markhah and Umm Nrn, the latter forming the general recipient of these Nullahs. The Jebel is about 120 feet high, of oval form, stretching 1750 metres from north-north-west to south-south-east. The rich silicate (not carbonate) of copper, which disdains a streak and affects the file, is found, as usual with this ore, only in one part of the valley to the south-west, some thirty-five feet above the sole: it is a pocket, a "circumscribed deposit," as opposed to a "true vein" or a "vein-fissure." The adjoining rocks contain carbonates of iron and copper, and the ore-mass is apparently carbonate of lime. This second visit generally confirmed the report of Ahmed Kaptn, except that there were no signs of working, as he had supposed. The travellers passed the whole of February 20th at the diggings, made a plan, and sent back two camel-loads (four sacks) of the gangue, in charge of a soldier, to the Fort of El-Muwaylah.

On the next day the little party made for the Wady Aynnah, and, striking to the left of the straight line, crossed the maritime country, here a mass of Wadys, including our old friend the Afl. This highway to the northern Hism falls, I have said, into the Mnat el-Aynt, a portlet useful to Sambks: its sickle-shaped natural breakwater, curving from west to south, resembles that of Sinaitic Mars el-Gini, and those which are so common in Western Iceland. On February 22nd, a very devious path, narrow and rocky, lasting for one hour, led them, about noon, to the northern Jebel el-Kibrt. The distance from El-Muwaylah is about sixty-six miles; and the country west of a line drawn from Aynnah to Makn was, before this march, utterly unknown to us, consequently to all the civilized world.

Lieutenant Yusuf's two journals checking each other, his plan and his specimens enable me to describe the northern deposit with more or less accuracy. The Sulphur-hill is a long oval of four hundred metres (east-west), by a maximum of one hundred and eighty (north-south); but it extends branches in all directions: the mineral was also found in a rounded piton, a knob on the Wady Musayr, attached to the north-eastern side. The flattened dome is from fifty to sixty feet high, and the piton one hundred and forty. The metal underlying a dark crust, some twelve to fifteen centimetres thick, appears in regular crystals and amorphous fragments of pure brimstone pitting the chalky sulphate of lime: blasting was not required; the soft material yielded readily to the pick. This gypseous or Secondary formation was found to extend, not only over the adjacent hills, but everywhere along the road to Makn. The important point which now remains to be determined is, I repeat, whether sulphur-veins can be found diffused throughout these non-plutonic rocks.

Lieutenant Yusuf fixed his position by climbing the adjacent hills, whence Sina'fir bore 190, and Shu'shu' 150 (both magnetic); while greater elevations to the west shut out the view of lofty Ti'ra'n, and even of the Sinaitic range. The nearest water in the Wady el-Nakhil to the north-east was reported to be a two hours' march with loaded camels (= five miles) Several little ports, quite unknown to the Hydrographic Chart, were visited. These are, beginning from the north, the Mnat Hamdn, lying between Makn and Dabbah; a refuge for Sambks defended, like that of old "Madyan," by rising ground to the north. About three miles and a quarter further south is the Sharm Dabbah, the "Sherm Dhaba, good anchorage" of the Chart: this mass of reefs and shoals may have been one of the "excellent harbours" mentioned by Procopius. It receives the Wady Sha'b el-Gnn (Jnn), "the Watercourse of the Demons' (Ja'nn) Ravine," flowing from a haunted hill of red stone, near which no Arab dares to sleep. From that point the travellers struck nine miles and a half to south-east of Ghubbat Suwayhil: this roadstead, used only by native craft, lies eastward of the long point forming the Arabian staple of the Gulf el-Akabah's gate, where the coast-line of Midian bends at a right angle towards the rising sun. Adjoining it to the east, and separated by a long thin spit, is the Ghubbat el-Wagab (Wajb), the mouth of the watercourse similarly named: it is also known to the Katrah or "smaller vessel," and about a mile up its bed, which comes from the north-east, there is a well. According to Jzi, the guide, this Ghubbah ("gulf"), distant only four to five hours of slow marching from the Sulphur-hill, will be the properest place for shipping produce. In another eastern feature, the Wady Giyl (Jiyl), distant some eleven miles and a half from Aynnah and ending in a kind of sink, there is a fine growth of palms, about a quarter of a mile long, and a supply of "wild" (brackish) water in wells and rain-pools. These uninteresting details will become valuable when the sulphur-mines of North Midian are ripe for working.

From the Ghubbat el-Wagab, the path, easy travelling over flat ground, strikes to the north-east; and, fourteen miles and a half beyond, joins the Aynnah highway. On February 26th, at the end of nine days' work, Lieutenant Yusuf returned to El-Muwaylah with two sacks of sulphur-bearing chalk which justified his previous report. As will appear, the Expedition was still travelling through the interior: after a halt for rest at head-quarters, he rejoined us on our northward route from Zib, and I again found useful occupation for his energies.

Upon our happy return "home," i.e. Sharm Yhrr, preparations for a march upon the Hism were at once begun. My heart was firmly fixed upon this project, hoping to find an "unworked California" to the east of the Harrah volcanoes; but the Shaykhs and camel-men, who did not like the prospect of a rough reception by the Ma'zah bandits, threw sundry small stumbling-blocks in our path. It was evidently useless to notice them so far from the spot; they would develop themselves only too well as we approached the tribal frontier. While these obstacles were being cleared away, we carefully examined the little dock that had so often given us shelter in the hour of need; and I set a small party to work at the central Jebel el-Kibri't, which had been explored by the first Expedition.

Sharm Yhrr is the usual distorted T, a long channel heading in a shorter cross-piece: it is formed by the confluence of four valleys, all composed of corallines and conglomerates of new sandstone. Those to the north and the north-west show distinct signs of upheaval; the two eastern features, known as the Wady el-Hrr ("the Hot Watercourse"), of which Yhrr appears to be a corruption, bear marks of man's hand. The dock is divided into an outer and inner "port" by a projecting northern point which is not sufficiently marked in the Chart (enlarged plan). At this place, where the tide rises a full metre, the crew of the Mukhbir had built a jetty of rough boulders, by way of passe-temps and to prevent wading. Native craft lie inside, opposite the ruins of a stone house: the existence of a former population is shown by the many graves on the upper plateau. In the northern Wady el-Hrr, also, we picked up specimens of obsidian, oligistic iron, and admirably treated modern (?) slags showing copper and iron; evidently some Gypsy-like atelier must once have worked upon the Wady Yhrr. The obsidian also has apparently been subjected to the artificial fire; and a splinter of it contains a paillette of free copper.

What concerned us most, however, was the discovery of oysters, which, adhering to the reefs projected under water from the rocky northern cliff, formed a live conglomerate; and from the present time forwards we found the succulent molluscs in almost every bay. Those to the south, where the shallows overlie sand and mud, are not so good. At this season the Ustrda is flat, fleshy, and full sized; the shell has a purple border, and the hinge muscle of the savage, far stronger than that of the civilized animal, together with its exceeding irregularity of shape, giving no purchase to the knife, makes oyster-opening a sore trouble. We tried fire, but the thick-skinned things resisted it for a long time; and, when they did gape, the liquor had disappeared, thereby spoiling the flavour. The "beard" was neither black, like that of the Irish, nor colourless, as in the English oyster. The Bedawin, who ignore the delicacy, could not answer any questions about the "spatting season"—probably it is earlier than ours, which extends through June; whether also a close time is required, as in England to August 4th, we could not guess. The young probably find a natural "culch" in the many shells, cockle and others, that strew the rock, sand, and clay.

Knowing that my gallant friend, Admiral McKillop (Pasha) of Alexandria, takes great interest in "ostreoculture," I sent him from Suez a barrel of the best Midianites The water had escaped by the carelessness of the magazine-man: enough, however, remained alive to be thrown into the harbour Eunostos, where they will, I hope, become the parents of a fine large progeny of "natives." Similarly we had laid in a store of forty-two langoustes (crayfish) for presentation at Court, and to gladden the hearts of Cairne friends: our Greeks placed the tubs in the sun and so close to the funnel, that, after about three hours, all the fine collection perished ignobly.

We will now proceed to the central Jebel el-Kibri't; a superficial examination of which by the first Expedition[EN#145] proved that the upper rock yielded four, and the lower nine, per cent. of tolerably pure brimstone. The shortest cut from the dock-harbour lies up the southern Wady Ha'rr, with its strangely weathered sandstone rocks, soft modern grits that look worm-eaten. Amongst them is a ledge-like block with undermined base projecting from the left bank: both the upper and the lower parts are scattered over with Wasm, or Arab tribal marks. On our return from El-Wijh we found this sandstone tongue broken in two: the massive root remained in situ, but the terminal half had fallen on the ground. This was probably the work of an earthquake which we felt at Sharm Dumayghah on March 22nd.[EN#146] The track then strikes the modern Hajj-road, which runs west of and close to the Sulphur-hill; the line is a succession of watercourses,[EN#147] and in Wady Khirgah we found blocks of the hydrous silicate, corundophyllite which may be Serpentine: it is composed of a multitude of elements, especially pyrites. After an hour and a quarter's sharp walking, we hit the broad Wady el-Kibrt, which rounds its Jebel to the south-east, and which feeds the Wady el-Jibbah, itself a feeder of the Sharm Jibbah. The latter, which gave us shelter in the corvette Sinnr (Captain Ali Bey), is a long blue line of water bounding the western base of the Sulphur-hill.

This central Tuwayyil el-Kibrt is an isolated knob, rising abruptly from Wady-ground; measuring some 240 feet in height, and about 880 metres in diameter, not including its tail of four vertebr which sets off from north-west to south-east. Viewed from the north it is, as the Egyptian officers remarked, a regular Haram ("pyramid"), with a kidney-formed capping of precipitous rock. Drinkable water, like that of the Wady el-Ghl, is said to be found in the Wady el-Kibrt to the north-east; and the country is everywhere tolerably wooded. The Bedawin brought us small specimens of rock-crystal and fragments of Negro-quartz, apparently rich in metal, from a neighbouring "Maru." They placed it amongst the hill-masses to the east and south; and we afterwards found it for ourselves.[EN#148]

Our middle Sulphur-hill differs essentially from the other two deposits, the northern near Makn, and the southern near El-Wijh, in being plutonic and not sedimentary. One would almost say that it smokes, and the heat-altered condition of the granite, the greenstone, and other rocks, looking as if fresh from a fire, suggests that it may be one of the igneous veins, thrown westward by the great volcanic region, El-Harrah. In parts it is a conglomerate, where a quantity of quartz takes the place of chalk and gypsum. Other deposits are iron-stained and have the appearance of the decomposed iron pyrites which abounds in this neighbourhood. Usually the yield is the normal brimstone-yellow, yet some of the beds are deep red, as if coloured by ochre or oxide of iron: this variety is very common in the solfataras of Iceland; and I have heard of it in the Jebel Mokattam, near Cairo. The colour is probably due to molecular changes, and possibly shows greater age than the yellow.

M. Philipin was directed to take charge of Sergeant Mabrk, the nine quarrymen, and the Bedawi owners of two camels to carry his boring-irons, forge, and water from El-Muwaylah. I advised him to dig at least forty feet down all round the pyramid, wherever surface-indications attracted notice: old experience had taught me that such depth is necessary before one can expect to find brimstone beds like those of Sicily. The borings brought up sulphur from fourteen metres; beyond these, six were pierced, but they yielded nothing. In and around the pyramid M. Philipin sank five pits; the northernmost shaft, half-way up the hill, gave crystals of the purest sulphur.

If the depth of the deposit be not great, the surface extent is. The pyramid evidently forms the apex of a large vein which strikes north-south. The field consists of this cone with its dependencies, especially the yellow cliffs to the north and the south, facing, in the latter direction, a large plain cut by the Wady el-Kibrt. Moreover, a vein of the red variety, about three kilometres long by twenty-five to thirty metres broad, lies to the south-east near a gypsum hill: the latter also yields the crystallized salt which so often accompanies sulphur, and heaps of gigantic half-fossilized oyster-shells are strewed about it.

M. Philipin here remained sixteen days (February 18—March 5), during our absence in the East Country; on return we found our good blacksmith much changed for the worse. Whilst in hard work he had been half-starved, the Jerfn Bedawin of the neighbourhood having disappeared with their flocks; he had been terribly worried by the cameleers, and he had been at perpetual feud with the miserable quarrymen. I never saw a man less fitted to deal with (two-legged) "natives." The latter instinctively divined that he would rather work himself than force others to work; and they acted accordingly.

The Expedition was thus divided into four, three working parties and one of idlers. Anton and Petros were left behind to do nothing as magazine-men.

Lieutenant Darwaysh (the linesman) who was too weak to ride, and Sub-Lieutenant Mohammed (the miner) who was too old to travel, had charge of the sick; both found the far niente equally sweet. On February 17th I again bade adieu to the gunboat Mukhbir, and marched with the largest party upon our camp at El-Muwaylah, distant about six miles (=one hour and forty-five minutes). The path from Sharm Yhrr crosses the hard sands of the maritime plain, metalled with the natural macadam of the Desert. The stone is mostly dark silex, the "hen's liver" of the Brazil, and its surface is kept finely polished, and free from "patina," by the friction of the dust-laden winds. The line is deeply gashed by short, broad gullies: the Hajj-road, running further east, heads these ugly Nullahs. The third and largest channel is Wady Surr, the great valley of El-Muwaylah, which may be regarded as the southern frontier of "Madyan" (Proper): we shall trace it to its head in the Hism.

I had left the camp-pitching at El-Muwaylah to the Egyptian officers, who naturally chose the site nearest the two northern wells; a wave of ground hot by day, cold at night, windy and dusty at all times; moreover, the water was near enough to be horribly fouled. No wonder that in such a place many of the men fell ill, and that one subsequently died—our only loss during the four months' march.

On February 18th we proceeded, under the misguidance of a Bsh-Buzk of the fort, Ahmed Slih el-Mal'n, to inspect a neighbouring ruin called Ab Hawwt—"the Father of (Dwelling-) Walls." Wallin (p. 30) declares that, "finding no mention made of Muweilih in Arab manuscripts, nor traces or traditions among the existing generation in the land, pointing to a high antiquity," he is inclined to consider it a town of modern origin, in fact the growth of the Egyptian pilgrimage. His error is excusable. He was a passing traveller; and I well remember that for a whole year the true name of a hill immediately behind our house at Damascus remained unknown to me: we had called it after our own fashion, and the term had at once been adopted by all our over-polite native friends. Indeed, this is one of the serious difficulties to be encountered, throughout the East, by the scrupulous traveller whose greatest fear is that of misleading others. The Expedition had paid four several visits to El-Muwaylah, and had never heard a word about ruins, when I happened to read out before the Shaykhs assembled at Maghir Shu'ayb a passage from El-Makrzi treating of the destroyed cities of Madyan. They at once mentioned half a dozen names lying within short distances of the "little salt." Amongst them was Ab Hawwt, literally meaning "tenement walls," but here applied, in the short form Hawwt, to ruins in general.

Had "Wali Hji," as Wallin was called by the Bedawin, looked only ten feet beyond the north-eastern tower of the fort, near the ruins of a modern Mastabah ("masonry bench"), he would have found long- forgotten vestiges of ovens and slags containing copper and iron. The same will prove to be the case about the inland defence of El- Wijh; in fact, all these works seem for obvious reasons to have been built upon sites that have been utilized long before their modern day. El-Muwaylah was probably a more important place than it is at present, when the reef-harbour, which now admits native craft only by a gap to the south-west, had not been choked by shoals. The sandy soil wants only water to produce a luxuriant perennial growth, and every garden can have its well. But more life is wanting; a man heaps up a thorn-hedge, or builds a swish-wall of the brick-clay underlying the Wady, and he forgets only to lay out the field within. Local history does not, it is true, extend beyond two hundred years or so, the probable date of Shaykh Abdullah's venerated sepulchre, a truncated parallelogram of cut coralline on the Wady Sughayyir to the north of the settlement. Yet this "little salt" is too remarkable a site to have remained unoccupied. Possibly it is the "," the Horse Village (and fort ?), which Ptolemy (vi. II) places in north lat. 26 40' (true 27 40'), whilst his "" would be the glorious Shrr, correctly consigned to north lat. 27 20'. This argues an error of nearly sixty miles by the geographer or his copyists. But Chapter XII. will attempt to show that the latitude of , the modern Shuwk, is also one degree too low. So on the East African coast Ptolemy places his Aromata Promontorium, which can only be "Guardafui," between north lat. 5 and 7, whereas it lies in north lat. 11 41' 4".

The Awwal Hawwt, or first ruins, begin on the right bank of the Surr after one mile and three quarters from camp; and bear north-east (55 mag.) from the minaret of El-Muwaylah Fort. The position is a sandy basin, containing old Bedawi graves, bounded by a low ridge forming a boulder-clad buttress to the Wady, while the circuit of the two may be a mile and a half. A crumbling modern tower, crowning the right bank, and two Mahrkah ("rub-stones") were the principal remains. The situation must have been well chosen in the days when the heights were wooded, and the Wady was a river. We afterwards mapped the body of the place, lying about three miles from the fort, showing the Yub' bank to north-west (298 mag.); and nearly due west (260 mag.) El-Muwaylah's only house, the Sayyid's. The site is a holm or island in the Wady Surr, which here runs east-west, and splits: the main line is the southern, and a small branch, a mere gully, occupies the northern bed-side.

The chief ruin is an oblong of twenty metres by sixteen, the short ends facing 195 (mag.); the whole built of huge pebbles. The interior is composed of one large room to the north, with sundry smaller divisions to the south, east, and west. Defence was secured by a wall, distant 142 metres, thrown across the whole eastern part of the islet: outside it are three large pits, evidently the site of cisterns. The people also told us of a well, the Bir el-Ashgham, which has long been mysteriously hidden. Immense labour has also been expended in revetting the northern and southern banks, both of the islet and the smaller branch-bed, for many hundreds of yards with round and water-rolled boulders, even on a larger scale than at Maghir Shu'ayb. What all this work meant we were unable to divine. Perhaps it belonged to the days when the seaboard of Midian was agricultural; and it was intended as a protection against the two torrents, the Wadys el-Zila' and Ab Zabah, which here fall into the northern bank.

The 18th of February also made itself memorable to the second Expedition. M. Marie was strolling near the old furnaces to the north-east of the fort where, in 1877, he had picked up an auriferous specimen, unfortunately lost before it reached Cairo. Here he again found a fragment of serpentine, broken and water-rolled into the semblance of half a globe; it showed crust and stains of iron, filets of white quartz, and a curve (~) of bright yellow dots, disposed like the chainlet of an aneroid. Thereupon, we gravely debated whether these were the remains of a vein, or had been brought to the surface by the rubbing and polishing of the stone in water.

I could not but remark that the interior, which appeared pyritiferous, did not show the slightest trace of precious metal. Still the discovery gave fresh courage to all our people. The trophy was shown to every Bedawi, far and near, with the promise of a large reward (fifty dollars) to the lucky wight who could lead us to the rock in situ. The general voice declared that the "gold-stone" was the produce of Jebel Malayh (Malh): we afterwards ascertained by marching up the Wady Surr that it was not. In fact, the whole neighbourhood was thoroughly well scoured; but the results were nil. In due course of time the tarnishing and the disappearance of the metal reduced my scepticism to a certainty: the "gold dots" were the trace of some pilgrim or soldier's copper-nailed boot. It was the first time that this ludicrous mistake arose, but not the last—our native friends were ever falling into the same trap.

Amongst the minor industries of the Fort el-Muwaylah must be reckoned selling gazelles. The Bedawin bring them in, and so succeed in taming the timid things that they will follow their owner like dogs, and amuse themselves with hopping upon his shoulders. When thus trained, "Ariel" is supposed to be worth half a napoleon. The wild ones may be bought at almost every fort, as Zib or El-Wijh.



Chapter X.

Through East Midian to the Hism.



The Land of Midian is by no means one of the late Prince Metternich's "geographical expressions." The present tenants of the soil give a precise and practical definition of its limits. Their Arz Madyan extends from El-Akabah north (north lat. 29 28') to El-Muwaylah with its Wady, El-Surr (north lat. 27 40'). It has thus a total latitudinal length of 108 direct geographical miles.[EN#149] South of this line, the seaboard of North-Western Arabia, as far as El-Hejaz, has no generic name. The Bedawin are contented with such vague terms, derived from some striking feature, as "the Lands of Zib," "of Wady Salm," "of Wady Dmah," "of El-Wijh," to denote the tract lying between the parallels of El-Muwaylah and of Wady Hamz () in north lat. 25 55' 15. Thus the north-south length of the southern moiety would be 105 direct geographical miles, or a little less than the northern; and the grand total would be 213 miles.

The breadth of this Egyptian province is determined by the distance from the sea to the maritime mountains. In Madyan Proper, or North Midian, the extremes would be twenty-four and thirty-five miles. For the southern half these figures may be doubled. Here, again, the Bedawin are definitive as regards limits. All the Tihmah or "lowlands" and their ranges belong to Egypt; east of it the Daulat Shm, or Government of Syria, claims possession.

I have taken the liberty of calling the whole tract Midian; the section above El-Muwaylah (Madyan Proper) I would term "North Midian," and that below it "South Midian." In the days of the ancient Midianites the frontiers were so elastic that, at times, but never for a continuity, they embraced Sinai, and were pushed forward even into Central Palestine. Moreover, I would prolong the limits eastward as far as the Damascus-Mednah road. This would be politically and ethnologically correct. With the exception of the Ma'zah country, the whole belongs to Egypt; and all the tribes, formerly Nabathan, are now more or less Egypto-Arab, never questioning the rights of his Highness the Viceroy, who garrisons the seaboard forts. Of the other points, historical and geographical, I am not so sure. My learned friend, Aloys Sprenger, remarks: "Let me observe that your extending the name Midian' over the whole country, as far south as the dominions of the Porte, appears to me an innovation by which the identity of the race along the shore of the Gulf of Akabah, coast down to Wajh and Hawr, is prejudged. Would it not be better to leave Midian where it always has been, and to consider Bad[EN#150] the centre of Thamditis, as it was at the time of Pliny and Ptolemy, and as it continued to be until the Balee (Baliyy), and other Qodh' (Kud') tribes, came from Southern Arabia, and exterminated the Thamdites?" This is, doubtless, a valid objection: its only weak point is that it goes too far back. We cannot be Conservatives in geography and ethnology; nor can we attach much importance, in the nineteenth century, to a race, the Beni Tamd, which had wholly disappeared before the seventh. On the whole, it still appears to me that by adopting my innovation we gain more than we lose; but the question must be left for others to decide.

In our days, two great Sultnis or "highways" bound Madyan the Less and Midian the Greater. The western, followed by the Hajj el-Misri (Egyptian caravan), dates from the age of Sultn Selim Khn the Conqueror; who, before making over the province to the later Mamlk Beys, levelled rocks, cut through ridges, dug wells, laid out the track, and defended the line by forts. Before that time the road ran, for convenience of water, to the east or inland: it was, in fact, the old Nabathaean highway which, according to Strabo, connected Leuk Kme with the western capital, Petra. Further east, and far beyond the double chain of maritime mountains, is the highway followed by the Hajj el-Shmi (Syrian or Damascus caravan), which sets out from Constantinople, musters at Damascus, and represents the Sultan. On both these main lines water is procurable at almost every station; and to them military expeditions are perforce limited. The parallelogram between the two, varying in breadth, according to Wallin, from 90 to 120 miles (direct and geographical), is irregularly supplied in places with springs, wells, and rain-pits, which can always be filled up or salted by the Bedawin.

The main body of the Expedition, Mr. Clarke, MM. Marie and Lacaze, Ahmed Kaptn, and Lieutenant Amir, set out from El-Muwaylah at 6.30 a.m. (February 19th), escorted by the Sayyid and the three salaried Shaykhs, including our friend Furayj. The Remingtons numbered ten, and there were also ten picks, of whom five waited upon the mules; of the sixty-one camels six were dromedaries, and as the road grew lighter our beasts of burden increased, somehow or other, to sixty-four. The caravan now loads in twenty minutes instead of five hours; and when politik, or fear of danger, does not delay us, we start in a quarter of an hour after the last bugle-sound. This operation is under charge of Lieutenant Amir, who does his best to introduce Dar-Forian discipline: the camels being first charged with the Fints ("metal water-barrels"), then with the boxes, and lastly with the tents.

After passing the ruins of Ab Hawwit, we began at 9:15 a.m. to exchange the broad Wady Surr of the flat seaboard, with its tall banks of stiff drab clay, for a gorge walled with old conglomerates, and threading the ruddy and dark-green foot-hills of the main Ght. As in the Wady el-Maka'dah and other "winter-brooks," the red porphyritic trap, heat-altered argil, easily distinguished by its fracture from the syenites of the same hue, appeared to be iron-clad, coated with a thin crust of shiny black or brown peroxide (?). This peculiarity was noticed by Tuckey in the Congo, by Humboldt in the Orinoco, and by myself in the So Francisco river; I also saw it upon the sandstones of the wild mountains east of Jerusalem, where, as here, air and not water must affect the oxide of iron. In both cases, however, the cause would be the same, and the polish would be a burnishing of Nature on a grand scale.

After six very slow miles we halted, for rest and refection, at a thread of water in the section of the Surr which receives the Wady el-Najil. The sides were crowded with sheep and goats, the latter, as in the Syrian lowlands, almost invariably black; and the adjoining rocks had peculiar attractions for hares, hawks, and partridge. In these upland regions water is almost everywhere, and generally it is drinkable; hence the Bedawin naturally prefer them to the coast. An umbrella-shaped thorn-tree, actually growing on a hill-top, and defined by the sky-line, excited our wonder and admiration; for here, as in Pontus—

"Rara, nec hc felix, in apertis eminet arvis Arbor, et in terra est altera forma maris."

Indeed, throughout our journey this spectacle always retained its charms, aiding Fancy to restore the barrens to what they had been in the prosperous days of yore.

The Wady Surr now began to widen out, and to become more riant, whilst porphyry was almost the only visible rock. After a total of ten "dawdling" miles, marching almost due east, we found our tents pitched in a broad and quasi-circular basin, called El-Safh ("the level ground of") Jebel Malh ("Mount Pleasant"?), which the broad-speaking Bedawin lengthen to Malayh. Our camel-men had halted exactly between two waters, and equally distant from both, so as to force upon us the hire of extra animals. We did not grumble, however, as we were anxious to inspect the Afrn ("furnaces") said to be found upon the upper heights of the Shrr—of these apocryphal features more hereafter. Fresh difficulties! The Jerfn-Huwaytt tribe, that owns the country south of the Surr, could not be reached under a whole day of dromedary-riding: in reality they were camped a few furlongs off, but anything to gain 8 per diem for doing nothing! Two Bedawi shepherd-lads promised to act guides next morning, and duly failed to appear, or, more probably, were forbidden to appear. They had also romanced about ruins, fountains, palms, and rushes in the Wady el-Kusayb, the south-eastern influent. At night Ahmed el-Ukbi, surnamed Ab Khartm, arrived in camp: he had travelled more than once to Tabk, carrying grain, and though he had failed as a merchant, he retained his reputation as a guide. As regards the furnaces, he also, like Furayj, could speak only from hearsay. Opinions were divided in camp: I saw clearly that a stand was being made to delay us for four or five days; and, despite grumbling, I resolved upon deferring the visit till our return from the interior.

The first march had led us eastward, instead of north-eastward, in order to inspect the Wady Surr. From the seaboard, this line, which drains the northern flank of the Shrr Mountains, appears the directest road into the interior. We shall presently see, however, why the devious northern way of the Wady Sadr has become the main commercial route connecting El-Muwaylah with Tabk.[EN#151] During the evening we walked up the Wady Surr, finding, in its precipitous walls, immense veins of serpentine and porphyritic greenstone, but not a speck of gold. The upper part of the Fiumara also showed abundant scatters of water-rolled stones, serpentines, and hard felspars, whose dove-coloured surface was streaked with fibrils and at times with regular veins of silvery lustre, as if brought out by friction of the surface. I offered a considerable sum to a Jerfn Bedawi if he would show the rock in situ; he was evidently ignorant of it, but, like others, he referred us to Jebel Malh.

The whole of the next day (February 20th) was spent in northing. Leaving the noisy braying caravan to march straight on its destination, we set out (6.15 a.m.) up the Wady Guwaymarah, guided by Hasan el-Ukb, who declared that he well knew the sites of the ruined settlements El-Khulasah and El-Zibayyib. After walking half an hour we turned eastward into a feeder of the Surr, the Wady el-Khulasah, whose aspect charmed me: this drain of the inner Jedayl block was the replica of a Fiumara in Somali-land, a broad tree-dotted flat of golden sand, bordered on either side by an emerald avenue of dense Mimosas, forming line under the green-stone hills to the right, and the red-stone heights to the left. The interior, we again remarked, is evidently more rained upon, and therefore less sterile and desolate, than the coast and the sub-maritime regions; and here one can well imagine large towns being built. At last, after walking about an hour and a half (= four miles and a half) towards the Shrr, with our backs turned upon our goal, the rat-faced little intriguer, Hasan, declared that he knew nothing about El-Khulasah, but that Zibayyib lay there! pointing to a bright-red cliffy peak, "Ab'l-brid," on the left bank of the Wady, and to others whose heads were blue enough and low enough to argue considerable distance. He had intended his cousin Gabr to be the real guide, and to take to himself all the credit; but I had sent off the parlous "judge" in another direction.

Mr. Clarke, whose cantering mule had no objection to leave its fellows, rode off with the recreant Hasan, whilst we awaited his return under a tree.

Instead of hugging Ab'l-brid, behind which a watercourse would have taken him straight to his destination, he struck away from the Wady el-Khulasah. Then crossing on foot, and hauling his animal over, a rough divide, he fell, after six miles instead of two, into the upper course of the Wady Surr, which he reported to be choked with stones, and refusing passage to loaded camels—as will afterwards appear, the reverse is the case. The ruins of El-Zibayyib lie at a junction of three, or rather four, watercourses. The eastern is the Surr, here about five hundred yards broad, forming a bulge in the bed, and then bending abruptly to the south; a short line from the south-west, the Wady Zibayyib, drains the Aba'l-brid peak; and the northernmost is the Wady el-Safr,[EN#152] upon which the old place stands cheval. The western part is the larger and the more ruinous. The thin line, three hundred yards long by thirty broad, never shows more than two tenements deep, owing to the hill that rises behind it: here the only furnace was found. The eastern block measures one hundred yards by forty; both are razed to their basements, resembling the miners' settlement on the Sharm cliff. They attract attention only by their material, red boulders being used instead of the green porphyries of the hills; and the now desolate spot shows no signs of water or of palm-groves.

Mr. Clarke rejoined us after a couple of hours, having lost the dog Brahim: under a sudden change of diet it had become too confident of its strength, and thus it is that dogs and men come to grief. We retraced our steps down the Wady el-Khulasah, whose Jebel is the crupper of the little block Umm Jedayl. The lower valley shows a few broken walls, old Arab graves, and other signs of ancient habitation; but I am convinced that we missed the ruins which lay somewhere in the neighbourhood. One Sulaymn, a Bedawi of the Sellimah-Huwaytt tribe, who had been rascalized by residence at El-Muwaylah, was hunted up by the energetic Sayyid; hoping, as usual, that no action would be taken upon mere words, he declared that El-Khulasah stood on the top of a trap-lump. We halted to inspect it, and Lieutenant Amir rode the Shaytnah, his vicious little she-mule, up and down steeps fit only for a goat. Again all was in vain.

We then travelled over granite gravel along the western foot-hills of Umm Jedayl, in which a human figure or statue had been reported to me: now, however, it became a Sarbt, or "upright stone." Along the flanks of the chief outlier, the Jebel el-Ramzah, distinguished by its red crest and veins, the slope was one strew of quartz, whole and broken; like that which we had seen to the north, and which we were to see on our southern journey. Despising the "rotten water" offered in two places by the Umm Jedayl, we pitched camp on the fine gravel of the Sayl Wady el-Jimm. Here I heard for the first time, after sighting it for many weeks, that the latter is the name, not of a mountain,[EN#153] but of a Sha'b or "gully" in the Jebel Dibbagh where waters "meet." The Wady Kh'shabriyyah, separating the Umm Jedayl from its northern neighbour, the Dibbagh, looks like a highway; but all declare that it is closed to camels by Wa'r, or "stony ground." Of its ruins more when we travel to the Shrr. This day's march of four hours (= ten miles and a half) had been a series of zigzags—north, north-east, west, and again north.

After a cool, pleasant night we set out at 6.30 a.m. (February 21st), across the broad Sayl, towards a bay in the mountains bearing north-north-west, the mouth of the Wady Zennrah. Entering the block, we made two short cuts to save great bends in the bed. The first was the Sha'b el-Liwwi', the Weiw of Wallin (p. 304)—wild riding enough; the path often winding almost due east, when the general direction was north-north-east. We saw, for the first time, pure greenish-yellow chlorite outcropping from the granite. The animals were apparently hibernating, and plants were rare; we remarked chiefly the sorrel and the blue thistle, or rather wild artichoke, the Shauk el-Jemel, a thorn loved by camels (Blepharis edulis), which recalled to mind the highlands of Syria. The second short-cut, the Wady el-Ga'agah, alias Sawwn, was the worse of the two: the deep drops and narrow gutters in the quartz-veined granite induced even the Shaykhs to dismount before attacking the descents. This is rarely done when ascending, for their beasts climb like Iceland ponies. One of M. Lacaze's most effective croquis is that showing monture and man disappearing in the black depths of a crevice. Some of the hill-crests were weathered with forms resembling the artificial. At the mid-day halting-ground we saw a stone-mother nursing a rock-child, which might still be utilized in lands where "thaumaturgy" is not yet obsolete.

Our course thence lay eastward up the easy bed of the Fiumara, an eastern section of an old friend, the Wady Tiryam; it now takes the well-known name "Wady Sadr," and we shall follow it to its head in the Hism. The scene is rocky enough for Scotland or Scandinavia, with its huge walls bristling in broken rocks and blocks, its blue slides, and its polished sheets of dry watercourse which, from afar, flash in the sun like living cataracts. On the northern or right bank rises the mighty Harb, whose dome, single when seen from the west, here becomes a Tridactylon, splitting into three several heads. Facing it, the northernmost end of the Dibbagh range forms a truncated tower, conspicuous far out at sea: having no name, it was called by us Burj Jebel Dibbagh. A little further to the east it will prove to be the monstrous pommel of a dwarf saddleback, everywhere a favourite shape with the granite outcrop.

MM. Clarke and Lacaze, who had never before seen anything higher that the hillocks of the Isle of Wight or the Buttes de Montmartre were hot upon ascending the almost perpendicular sides of the Burj, relying upon the parallel and horizontal fissures in the face, which were at least ten to twenty feet apart. These dark marks, probably stained by oxide of iron, reminded me of those which wrinkle the granitic peaks about Rio de Janeiro, and which have been mistaken for "hieroglyphs."

The valley-sole is parti-coloured; the sands of the deeper line to the right are tinctured a pale and sickly green by the degradation of the porphyritic traps, here towering in the largest masses yet seen; while the gravel of the left bank is warm, and lively with red grit and syenitic granite. Looking down the long and gently waving line, we feel still connected with the civilized world by the blue and purple screen of Sinai forming the splendid back-ground. Everything around us appears deserted; the Ma'zah are up country, and the Beni Ukbah have temporarily quitted these grazing-grounds for the Surr of El-Muwaylah. We camped for the night, after a total march of eleven miles, at the Sayl el-Nagwah, a short Nullah at the foot of a granite block similarly named; and a gap supplied us with tolerable rain-water.

On the next day (February 22nd) we left the "Nagwah" at seven instead of six a.m., and passed to the right a granitic outcrop in the Wady bed, a reduced edition of the Burj. After an hour's slow walking we were led by a Bedawi lad, Hasan bin Husayn, to a rock-spur projected northwards from the left side and separating two adjacent Sayls or "torrent-beds," mere bays in the bank of mountains. A cut road runs to the top of the granite tongue, which faces the westernmost or down-stream outbreaks of the huge porphyritic masses on the other side of the Wady Sadr. The ridge itself is strewed with spalled stone, quartz broken from the veins that seam the granite, and with slag as usual admirably worked. Not a trace of human habitation appears, nor is there any tradition of a settlement having existed here; consequently we concluded that this was another atelier of wandering workmen. Below the rock-tongue we found for the first time oxydulated iron and copper, either free or engaged in trap and basaltic dykes: the former metal, also attached in layers to dark-red vermeilled jasper, here appears streaked with white quartz.

Resuming our ride, we dismounted, after four miles, at the half-way Mahattah ("halting-place"): it is a rond-point in the Wady Sadr, marked from afar by a tall blue pyramid, the Jebel el-Ga'lah (Jlah). We spent some time examining this interesting bulge. Here the Jibl el-Tihmah end, and the eastern parallel range, the Jibl el-Shafah, begins. The former belong to the Huwaytt and to Egypt; the latter, partly to the Ma'zah and to Syria. The geographical frontier is well marked by two large watercourses disposed upon a meridian, and both feeding the main drain, the Sadr-Tiryam. To the north the Wady Sawdah divides the granitic Harb from the porphyritic Jebel Sawdah; while the southern Wady Ayln separates the Dibbagh from the Jebel Ayln, a tall form distinctly visible from the Upper Shrr. The rest of our eastward march will now be through the Shafah massif. It resembles on a lower scale the Tihmah Ghts; but it wholly wants their variety, their beauty, and their grandeur. The granites which before pierced the porphyritic traps in all directions, now appear only at intervals; and this, I am told, is the case throughout the northern, as we found it to be in the southern, prolongation of the "Lip"-range. At the same time there is no distinct geographical separation between the two parallels; and both appear, not as if parted by neutral ground, but rather as topographical continuations of each other.

While breaking our fast and resting the mules, a few shots ringing ahead caused general excitement: we were now on the edge of the enemy's country. Presently three of the Ma'zah came in and explained, with their barking voices, that their people had been practicing at the Nshn ("target"); which meant "We have powder in abundance." One of them, at once dubbed El-Nasns ("the Satyr") from his exceeding monstrous ugliness—a baboon's muzzle with a scatter of beard—kindly volunteered to guide us, with the intention of losing the way. The dialogue that took place was something as follows:—

What are your names ?

A. Na'akal wa nashrab! Our names are "We eat and We drink!"

Where do we find water to-day?

Furayj ejaculates, "The water of the Rikb!"

A. No, by Allah! The Arabs will never allow you to drink! You should be killed for carrying off in Dums ("skins") the sand of the Wady Jahd (alluding to Lieutenant Amir's trip).

We did not pay much heed to these evil signs. Ahmed el-Ukb had been sent forward to obtain a free pass from the chiefs, and we hardly expected that the outlying thieves would be daring enough to attack us.

Resuming our way, in a cold wind and a warm sun, up the upper Wady Sadr, we threaded the various bends to the south and south-east, with a general south-south-eastern direction. The normal dark-green traps and burnished red porphyries and grits were sparsely clad with the Shauhat and the Yasr trees, resembling the Salvadora and the Tamarix. The country began to show a few donkeys and large flocks of sheep and goats; the muttons have a fine "tog," and sell for three dollars and a half. The women in charge, whose complexions appeared notably lighter than those of the seaboard, barked like the men. They were much puzzled by a curious bleating which came from the mules; and hurriedly counted their kids, suspecting that one had been purloined, whilst they had some trouble to prevent the whole flock following us. All roared with laughter when they found that Mr. Clarke was the performer.

We crossed two short cuts over long bends in the Wady; and at the second found a pot-hole of rain-water by no means fragrant, except to nostrils that love impure ammonia. It has a grand name, Muwah (for Miyh) el-Rikb ("the Waters of the Caravan"); and we made free with it, despite the morning's threats. We again camped in the valley at an altitude of 2200 feet (aner. 27.80); and, though the thermometer showed 66 F. at five p.m., fires inside and outside the mess-tent were required. A wester or sea-breeze, deflected by the ravines to a norther, was blowing; and in these regions, as in the sub-frigid zones of Europe, wind makes all the difference of temperature. During the evening we were visited by the Ma'zah Bedawin of a neighbouring encampment: they began to notice stolen camels and to wrangle over past times—another bad sign.

Setting out on a splendidly lucent morning (6:45 a.m., February 23rd), when the towering heads of Harb and Dibbagh looked only a few furlongs distant, we committed the imprudence of preceding, as usual, the escort. Our men had become so timid, starting at the sight of every wretched Bedawi, that they made one long for a "rash act." After walking about a mile and a half, we passed some black tents on the left bank, where the Sadr enters a narrow rocky gorge; and suddenly about a dozen varlets were seen scampering over the walls, manning the Pass, and with lighted matches threatening to fire. Then loud rang the war-song—

"Hill el-Zawib, hilla-h; W'abdi Nuhdak kulla-h!"

"Loose thy top-locks with a loosing (like a lion's mane); And advance thy breast, all of it (opponite pectora without shrinking)."

Other varieties of the slogan are:—

"O man of small mouth (un misrable)! If we fail, who shall win?"

And—

"By thy eyes (I swear), O she-camel, if we go (to the attack) and gird (the sword), We will make it a day of sorrow to them, and avert from ourselves every ill."

We dismounted, looked to our weapons, and began to parley. The ragged ruffians, some of them mere boys, and these always the readiest to blow the matches of guns longer than themselves, began with high pretensions. They declared that they would be satisfied with nothing less than plundering us; they flouted Shaykh Furayj, and they insulted the Sayyid, threatening to take away his sword.

Presently the escort and the Arab camel-men were seen coming up at the double. The Ma'zah at once became abject; kissed our heads and declared "there was some mistake." I had already remarked, whilst the matchlock-men were swarming up the Wady-sides, that the women and children remained in camp, and the sheep and goats were not driven off. This convinced me that nothing serious had been intended: probably the demonstration was ordered from head-quarters in order to strike us with a wholesome awe.

The fellows gently reproached us with travelling through their country without engaging (and paying) Ghafr—"guides and protectors." So far, as owners of the soil, they were "in their right;" and manning a pass is here the popular way of levying transit dues. On this occasion the number of our Remingtons sufficed to punish their insolence by putting the men to flight, and by carrying off their camels and flocks; but such a step would have stopped the journey, and what would not the "Aborigines Protection Society" have said and done? I therefore hired one of the varlets, and both parties went their ways rejoicing that the peace had not been broken.

The valley, winding through the red and green hills, was dull and warm till the cool morning easter, which usually set about eight a.m., began to blow. The effect of increasing altitude showed itself in the vegetation. We now saw for the first time the Kidd (Astragalus), with horrid thorns and a flower resembling from afar the gooseberry: it is common on the Hism and in the South Country. The Kahl (Echium), a bugloss, a borage-like plant, with viscous leaves and flowers of two colours,—the young light-pink and the old dark-blue,—everywhere beautified the sands, and reminded me of the Istrian hills, where it is plentiful as in the Nile Valley. The Jarad-thorn was not in bloom; and the same was the case with the hyacinth (Dipcadi erythraeum), so abundant in the Hisma', which some of us mistook for a "wild onion." The Zayti (Lavandula) had just donned its pretty azure bloom. There were Reseda, wild indigo, Tribulus (terrestris), the blue Aristida, the pale Stipa, and the Bromus grass, red and yellow. The Ratam (spartium), with delicate white and pink blossoms, was a reminiscence of Tenerife and its glorious crater; whilst a little higher up, the amene Cytisus, flowering with gold, carried our thoughts back to the far past.

Presently the great Fiumara opened upon a large basin denoting the Ras ("head") Wady Sadr: native travellers consider this their second stage from El-Muwaylah. In front the Jibl Sadr extended far to the right and left, a slight depression showing the Khuraytah, or "Pass," which we were to ascend on the morrow. Buttressing the left bank of the broad watercourse was the dwarf hill of which we had been told so many tales. By day its red sands gleam and glisten like burnished copper; during the night fire flashes from the summit: in truth, its sole peculiarity is that of being yellow amongst the gloomy heights around it; whilst the Wady el-Safr, higher up to the left, discharges from its Jebel a torrent of quartz and syenite, gravel and sand. Ab Khartm, the author of the romance, was among the party: he only smiled when complimented upon the power of his imagination.

This was a day of excitement: even the mules kept their ears pricked up. After a short nine miles we had camped below the Jebel Kibr, and we had remounted our animals to ascend a neighbouring hill commanding a bird's-eye view of the Hism plain. There was evidently much excitement amongst the Bedawi shepherds around us; and presently Ahmed el-Ukb, our messenger, appeared in sight, officially heading the five chiefs of the Ma'zah, who were followed by a tail of some thirty clansmen. Only two rode horses, wretched garrons stolen from the Ruwal, the great branch of the Anezah, which holds the eastern regions; the rest rode fine sturdy and long-coated camels, which looked Syrian rather than Midianite.[EN#154] We returned hurriedly to make arrangements for the reception: our Shaykhs could not, without derogating, go forth to meet the strangers; but the latter were saluted with due ceremony by the bugler and the escort, drawn up in line before the mess-tent.

After the usual half-hour's delay, the "palaver," to speak Africanic, "came up," and M. Lacaze had a good opportunity of privily sketching the scene. The Shaykh, Mohammed bin Atyyah, who boasts (falsely) that he commands more than half the two thousand males composing the tribe, is a tall, sinewy man of about fifty, straight-featured, full-bearded, and gruff-voiced: his official style of speaking from the throat, a kind of vaccine low, imitated in camp for many a day, never failed to cause merriment. His costume rose to the height of Desert-fashion, described when pourtraying Shaykh Khizr the Imrni; his manners were those of a gentleman below the Pass, and above it he became an unmitigated ruffian, who merited his soubriquet El-Kalb ("the Hound"). On one side sat his son Slim, a large, beardless lad, who had begun work by presenting us with a sheep—Giorgi (cook) said it cost us 40. On the other was his eldest brother and alter ego: the wrinkled Sagr (Sakr) has been a resident at Cairo, and still boasts that he received the "tribute" of a horse from the Viceroy, whom he affects to treat as an equal or rather an inferior. The others were old Sagr's ill-visaged son Ali, and, lastly, a cunning-eyed villain, Abayd bin Slim, the rightful heir to the chieftainship, which, however, he had been unable to keep. All the Shaykhs were dressed in brand-new garments and glaring glossy Kfyahs ("head-kerchiefs"); they trade chiefly with Mezrb in the Haurn; and, during the annual passage to and fro of the Damascus caravan, they await it at Tabk, and threaten to cut off the road unless liberally propitiated with presents of raiment and rations. The Murtibah (honorarium) contributed by El-Shm would be about one hundred dollars in ready money to the headman, diminishing with degree to one dollar per annum: this would not include "free gifts" by pilgrims. The Ma'zah are under Syria, that is, under no rule at all; and they are supposed to be tributary to, when in reality they demand tribute from, the Porte. In fact, nothing can be more pronounced than the contrast of the Bedawin who are subject to Egypt, and those supposed to be governed by the wretched Ottoman.

During the palaver all outside was sweet as honey, to use the Arab phrase, and bitter as gall inside. The Ma'zah, many of whom now saw Europeans for the first time, eyed the barnet (hat) curiously, with a certain facial movement which meant, "This is the first time we have let Christian dogs into our land!" They were minute in observing the escort, and not a little astonished to find that all were negroes—in the old day Egyptian soldiers, under the great Mohammed Ali Pasha and his stepson, Ibrahim Pasha, had made themselves a terror to the Wild Man. "What had now become of them?" was the mental question. When asked whence they had procured the two horses, they answered curtly, Min Rabbin—"From our Lord," thus signifying stolen goods; and, like mediaeval knights, they took a pride in avowing that not one of their number could read or write. Finally a tent was assigned to them; food was ordered, and they promised us escort to their dens on the morrow.

During the raw and gusty night the mercury sank to 38 F., the aneroid (26.91) showing about three thousand feet above sea-level; and blazing fires kept up within and without the tents, hardly sufficed for comfort. On the morning of February 24th

"Over the wold the wind blew cold;"

and the Egyptian officers all donned their gloves. The early hours were spent in a last struggle with our Shaykhs, who now felt themselves and their camels hopelessly entering the lion's lair. The sole available pretext for delay was that their animals could never carry the boxes and tents up the Pass; but, though very ugly reports prevailed concerning the reception of Ahmed el-Ukb, and the observations that had been made last night, not a word was suffered to reach my ears until our retreat had been resolved upon. Such concealment would have been inexcusable in a European; in the East it is the rule.

At 7.15 a.m. we struck the camp at Jebel Kibr, and moved due eastward towards the Pass. This north-eastern Khuraytah (Col) is termed the Khuraytat el-Hism or el-Jils, after a hillock on the plateau-summit, to distinguish it from the similar feature to the south-west: the latter is known as the Khuraytat el-Zib; or el-T h m , the local pronunciation of Tihmah. About two miles of rough and broken ground lead to the foot of the ladder. The zigzags then follow the line of a mountain torrent, the natural Pass, crossing its bed from left to right and from right again to left: the path is the rudest of corniches, worn by the feet of man and beast; and showing some ugly abrupt turns. The absolute height of the ascent is about 450 feet (aner. 26.70—26.25) and the length half a mile. The ground, composed mostly of irregular rock-steps, has little difficulty for horses and mules; but camels laden with boards (the mess-table) and long tent-poles must have had a queer time—I should almost expect after this to see an oyster walking up stairs. Of course, they took their leisure, feeling each stone before they trusted it, but they all arrived without the shadow of an accident; and the same was the case during the two subsequent descents.

We halted on the Sath el-Nakb ("the Passtop") to expect the caravan, and to prospect the surrounding novelties. Heaps and piles of dark trap dotted the summit like old graves; many of the stones were inscribed with tribal marks, and not a few were capped with snowy lumps of quartz detached from their veins in the porphyry. This custom, which appears universal throughout Midian, has many interpretations. According to some it denotes the terminus of a successful raid; others make it show where a dispute was settled without bloodshed; whilst as a rule it is an expression of gratitude: the Bedawi erects it in honour of the man who protected or who did a service to him, saying at the same time, Abyaz alayk y Fula'n—"White (or happy) be it to thee!" naming the person. Amongst these votive stones we picked up copper-stained quartz like that of Aynnah, fine specimens of iron, and the dove-coloured serpentine, with silvery threads, so plentiful in the Wady Surr. The Wasm in most cases showed some form of a cross, which is held to be a potent charm by the Sinaitic Bedawin; and on two detached water-rolled pebbles were distinctly inscribed lH and Vl, which looked exceedingly like Europe. Apparently the custom is dying out: the modern Midianites have forgotten the art and mystery of tribal signs (Wusm). In many places the people cannot distinguish between inscriptions and "Bill Snooks his mark," and they can interpret very few of the latter.

Looking westward through the inverted arch formed by the two hill-staples of the Khuraytah, and down the long valley which had given us passage, the eye distinguishes a dozen distances whose several planes are marked by all the shades of colour that the most varied vegetation can show. There are black-browns, chocolate-browns, and light umber-browns; bright-reds and dull-reds; grass-greens and cypress-greens; neutral tints and French greys contrasting with the rosy pinks, the azures, the purples, and the golden yellows with which distance paints the horizon. From a few feet above the Col-floor appear the eastern faces of the giants of the coast-range; and our altitude, some 3800 feet, gave us to a certain extent a measure of their grand proportions.

We now stand upon the westernmost edge of the great central Arabian plateau, known as El-Nejd ("the Highlands"), opposed to El-Tihmah, the lowland regions. In Africa we should call it the "true" subtending the "false" coast; delightful Dahome compared with leprous Lagos. This upland, running parallel with the "Lip"-range and with the maritime Ghts, is the far-famed Hism. It probably represents a remnant of the old terrace which, like the Secondary gypseous formation, has been torn to pieces by the volcanic region to the east, and by the plutonic upheavals to the west. The length may be 170 miles; the northern limit is either close to or a little south of Fort Ma'n; and we shall see its southern terminus sharply defined on a parallel with the central Shrr, not including "El-Jaww."[EN#155] An inaccessible fortress to the south, it is approached on the south-west by difficult passes, easily defended against man and beast. Further north, however, the Wadys Afl near El-Sharaf, El-Hakl (Hagul), and El-Yitm at El-Akabah, are easy lines without Wa'r ("stony ground") or Nakb ("ravines").

The Hism material is a loose modern sandstone, showing every hue between blood-red, rose pink, and dead, dull white: again and again fragments had been pointed out to us near the coast, in ruined buildings and in the remains of handmills and rub-stones. Possibly the true coal-measures may underlie it, especially if the rocks east of Petra be, as some travellers state, a region of the Old, not the New Red. According to my informants, the Hism has no hills of quartz, a rock which appears everywhere except here; nor should I expect the region to be metalliferous.

We ascended the Jebel el-Khuraytah, a trap hillock some 120 feet high, the southern jamb of the Khuraytah gate: the summit, where stands a ruined Burj measuring fourteen metres in diameter, gives a striking and suggestive view. After hard dry living on grisly mountain and unlovely Wady, this fine open plain, slightly concave in the centre, was a delightful change of diet to the eye—the first enjoyable sensation of the kind, since we had gazed lovingly upon the broad bosom of the Wady el-Arabah. The general appearance is that of Eastern Syria, especially the Haurn: at the present season all is a sheet of pinkish red, which in later March will turn to lively green. On this parallel the diameter does not exceed a day's march, but we see it broadening to the north. Looking in that direction over the gloomy-metalled porphyritic slopes upon which we stand, the glance extends to a manner of sea-horizon; while the several planes below it are dotted with hills and hill-ranges, white, red, and black, all dwarfed by distance to the size of thimbles and pincushions. The guides especially pointed out the ridge El-Mukaykam, a red block upon red sands, and a far-famed rendezvous for raid and razzia. Nearer, the dark lumps of El-Khayrni rise from a similar surface; nearer still lie the two white dots, El-Rakhamatayn; and nearest is the ruddy ridge Jebel and Jils el-Rawiyn, containing, they say, ruins and inscriptions of which Wallin did not even hear.

The eastern versant of the Hism is marked by long chaplets of tree and shrub, disposed along the selvage of the watercourses; and the latter are pitted with wells sunk after the fashion of the Bedawin. In this rhumb the horizon is bounded by El-Harrah, the volcanic region whose black porous lavas and honey-combed basalts, often charged with white zeolite, are still brought down even to the coast to serve as mortars and handmills. The profile is a long straight and regular line, as if formed under water, capped here and there by a tiny head like the Syrian Kulayb Haurn: its peculiar dorsum makes it distinguishable from afar, and we could easily trace it from the upper heights of the Shrr. It is evidently a section of the mighty plutonic outburst which has done so much to change the aspect of the parallel Midian seaboard. Wallin's account of it (p. 307) is confined to the place where he crossed the lava-flood; and he rendered El-Harrah, which in Arabic always applies to a burnt region, by "red-coloured sandstone."

The Bedawin far more reasonably declare that this Harrah is not a mere patch as it appears in Wallin's map, a narrow oblong not exceeding sixty miles (north lat. 27—28), disposed diagonally from north-west to south-east. According to them, it is a region at least as large as the Hism; and it extends southwards not only to the parallel of El-Mednah, but to the neighbourhood of Yamb'. The upper region has two great divisions: the Harrat-Hism or the Harrah par excellence, which belongs to the Ma'zah, and which extends southwards through El-Sulaysilah as far as the Jaww. The latter region, a tract of yellow sand, dotted with ruddy hills, apparently a prolongation of the Hism, separates it from the Harrat el-Awayraz, in which the Jebel el-Muharrak lies.[EN#156] This line of volcanism is continued south by the Harrat el-Mushrif (P.N. of a man); by the Harrat Suth Jayd; and, finally, by the Harrat el-Buhayri. the latter shows close behind the shore at El-Haur, in nearly the same latitude as El-Mednah, where we shall presently sight it. There is great interest and a general importance in this large coast-subtending eruptive range, whose eastern counterslope demands long and careful study.

Sweeping the glance round to south, we see the southern of the two Jilsayn, tall mounds of horizontal strata, with ironstone in harder lines and finial blocks. This is the Jils el-Dim, so distinguished from the northern Jils el-Rawiyn. The lower edge of the Hism swells up in red and quoin-like masses, the Jibl el-Zwiyah, and then falls suddenly, with a succession of great breaks, into the sub-maritime levels. During our next ten days' travel we shall be almost in continuous sight of its southern ramparts and buttresses. Far over the precipices lie the low yellow sands of the Rahabah, alias the Wady Dmah; and behind it rises the sky-blue mountain block, which takes a name from the ruins of Shaghab and Shuwk.