The turbulent "Dog's Sons"[EN#50] were mostly in the upper lands; but a few wretched fellows, with swords, old spears, and ridiculous matchlocks, assembled and managed to get up a squabble about the right of leading strangers into "our country" (Bild-n). The doughty Rjih ibn Ayid, who, mounted upon a mean dromedary, affected to be chief guide, seemed to treat their pretensions as a serious matter, when we laughed them to scorn. He and all the other experts gave us wholly discouraging details concerning a ruin represented to lie, some hours off, in the nearest of the southern Harrah. According to them, the Kasr el-Bint ("Maiden's Palace") was in the same condition as El-Haur; showing only a single pillar, perhaps the "columns" to which Wellsted alludes. We could learn nothing concerning the young person whose vague name it bears; except that she preferred settling on the mainland, whereas her brother built a corresponding castle upon the islet Jebel Hassni.[EN#51] He is locally called Warakat ibn Naufal, a venerated name in the Fatrah, or "interval," between Jesus and Mohammed; he was the uncle of Khadijah the widow, and he is popularly supposed to have been a Christian. Here, as at other places, I inquired, at the suggestion of a friend, but of course in vain, about the human skeleton which Ibn Mujwar, some six centuries ago, found embedded in a rock near the sea-shore.

Such is the present condition of the once famous emporium Leuk Kme. We returned along the shore to embark; and, shortly after noon, the old corvette of Crimean date again swung round on her heel, and resumed her wanderings, this time northwards. The run of eighteen hours and fifteen minutes was semicircular, but the sea had subsided to a dead calm. The return to El-Wijh felt like being restored to civilization; we actually had a salad of radish leaves—delicious!

Our travel will now lie through the Baliyy country, and a few words concerning this ancient and noble tribe may here be given. Although they apparently retain no traditions of their origin, they are known to genealogists as a branch of the Beni Kud', who, some fifteen centuries ago, emigrated from Southern Arabia, and eventually exterminated the Thamudites. I have noted their northern and southern frontiers: to the north-east they are bounded by the vicious Ma'zah and the Ruwal-Anezahs, and to the south-east by the Alaydn-Anezahs, under Shaykh Mutlak. Like their northern nomadic neighbours, they have passed over to Egypt, and even the guide-books speak of the "Billi" in the valley of the Nile.

The Baliyy modestly rate their numbers at four thousand muskets, by which understand four hundred. Yet they divide themselves into a multitude of clans; our companion, the Wakl Mohammed Shahdah, can enumerate them by the score; and I wrote down the twenty-three principal, which are common both to South Midian and to Egypt. The chief Shaykh, Mohammed Afnn ibn Ammr, can reckon backwards seven generations, beginning from a certain Shaykh Sultn. About ten years ago he allowed the tribe to indulge in such dangerous amusements as "cutting the road" and plundering merchants. It is even asserted, privily, that they captured the fort of El-Wijh, by bribing the Turkish Topji ("head gunner"), to fire high—like the half-caste artilleryman who commanded the Talpr cannoneers at Sir Charles Napier's Battle of "Meeanee." A regiment of eight hundred bayonets was sent from Egypt, and the Shaykh was secured by a Hlah, or "stratagem;" that is, he was promised safe conduct: he trusted himself like a fool, he was seized, clapped in irons, and sent to jail in the Citadel of Cairo. Here he remained some seven months in carcere duro, daily expecting death, when Fate suddenly turned in his favour; he was sent for by the authorities, pardoned for the past, cautioned for the future, and restored to his home with a Murtibah ("regular pension") of eight hundred piastres per mensem, besides rations and raiment. The remedy was, like cutting off the nose of a wicked Hind wife, sharp but effective. Shaykh Afnan and his tribe are now models of courtesy to strangers; and the traveller must devoutly wish that every Shaykh in Arabia could be subjected to the same discipline.

The Baliyy are a good study of an Arab tribe in the rough. The Huwaytt, for example, know their way to Suez and to Cairo; they have seen civilization; they have learned, after a fashion, the outlandish ways of the Frank, the Fellah, and the Turk-fellow. The Baliyy have to be taught all these rudiments. Cunning, tricky, and "dodgy," as is all the Wild-Man-race, they lie like the "childish-foolish," deceiving nobody but themselves. An instance: Hours and miles are of course unknown to them, but they began with us by affecting an extreme ignorance of comparative distances; they could not, or rather they would not, adopt as a standard the two short hours' march between the Port and the inland Fort of El-Wijh. When, however, the trick was pointed out to them, they at once threw it aside as useless. No pretext was too flimsy to shorten a march or to cause a halt—the northerners did the same, but with them we had a controlling power in the shape of Shaykh Furayj. And like the citizens, they hate our manner of travelling: they love to sit up and chat through half the night; and to rise before dawn is an abomination to them.

At first their manners, gentle and pliable, contrast pleasantly with the roughness of the half-breds, Huwaytt and Maknwi, who have many of the demerits of the Fellah, without acquiring the merits of the Bedawi. As camel-men they were not difficult to deal with; nor did they wrangle about their hire. Presently they turned out to be "poor devils," badly armed, and not trained to the use of matchlocks. Their want of energy in beating the bushes and providing forage for their camels, compared with that of the northerners, struck us strongly. On the other hand, they seem to preserve a flavour of ancient civilization, which it is not easy to describe; and they certainly have inherited the instincts and tastes of the old metal-workers: they are a race of born miners. That sharpest of tests, the experience of travel, at last suggested to us that the Baliyy is too old a breed; and that its blue blood wants a "racial baptism," a large infusion of something newer and stronger.



Note on the "Harrahs" of Arabia.



The learned Dr. J. G. Wetzstein, in the appendix to his "Reisebericht," etc.,[EN#52] records a conversation with A. von Humboldt and Carl Ritter (April, 1859), respecting the specimens which he had brought from the classical Trachonitis. Their appearance led the latter to question whether the latest eruptions of the Harrat Rjil, as it is called from an adjoining valley, may not have taken place within the historic period; and he referred to Psalm xviii. as seeming to note the occurrence, during David's reign, of such a phenomenon in or near Palestine. Humboldt deemed it probable that the Koranic legend (chap. iv.) of the Abyssinian host under Abraha destroyed by a shower of stones baked in hell-fire, referred, not to small-pox as is generally supposed, but to an actual volcanic eruption in Arabia.

"With what interest would that great man have learnt," writes Dr. Wetzstein, "that, as I was turning over the leaves of Ykt's Geographical Lexicon,' only a few days ago, I found that the Arabians knew of the existence of twenty-eight different volcanic regions between Hauran and Bab el-Mandeb!" Later still, Dr. Otto Loth published an elaborate paper "On the Volcanic Regions (Harras) of Arabia, according to Yakut" (thirteenth century), in which these eruptive sites are nearly all identified and described.

"Among the numerous volcanoes thus found to exist within the Arabian Peninsula," remarks Dr. Beke,[EN#53] "the only one recorded as having been in activity within the historic period is the Harrat-el-Nar (Fire Harra'), situate to the north-east of Medina, in the neighbourhood of Khaibur (Khaybar), in about 26. 30' north lat., and 40. east long.; which, being traditionally said to have been in an active state six centuries before Mohammed, had actually an eruption in the time of the Prophet's successor, Omar. To the north-west of this Fire Harra' lies that known as the Harra of (the tribe of) Udhra' (Azra): again, to the north of this is the Harra of Tabuk,' so called from the station of that name on the Hajj-road from Damascus to Mekka, the position of which is in about 28 deg. 15' north lat. and 37 deg. east long.; and beyond this last, further to the north, and consequently between it and the northernmost Harra of the Rdjil, or Trachonitis, is the Harra Radjl. . . . Its designation, which means rough,' pathless,' seems to indicate its peculiarly rugged surface, and to lead to the inference that it is an immense field of lava." He cites Irby and Mangles ("Travels in Egypt," pp. 115, 116; reprinted by Murray, London, 1868), describing their route between Kerak and Petra, on the east side of the Ghor or Wady Arabah. "We noticed three dark volcanic summits, very distinguishable from the land. The lava that had streamed from them forms a sort of island in the plain."

Hence my late friend concluded that his "true Mount Sinai" was the focus and origin of this volcanic region; and that the latter was the "great and terrible wilderness" (Deut. i. 19) through which the children of Israel were led on their way to mysterious Kadesh-Barnea. Thus, too, he explained the "pillar of the cloud by day," and the "pillow of fire by night" (Exod. xiii. 21).



Chapter XVI. Our Last March—the Inland Fort—Ruins of the Gold-mines at Umm El-Karyt and Umm El-Harb.



Again there were preliminaries to be settled before we could leave El-Wijh for the interior. Shaykh Mohammed Afnn had been marrying his son; and the tale of camels came in slowly enough. On the day after our return from El-Haur the venerable old man paid us a visit aboard Sinnr. He declares that he was a boy when the Wahhbi occupied Meccah and El-Mednah—that is, in 1803-4. Yet he has wives and young children. His principal want is a pair of new eyes; and the train of thought is, "I can't see when older men than myself can." The same idea makes the African ever attribute his sickness and death to sorcery: "Why should I lose life when all around me are alive?"—and this is the idea that lies at the bottom of all witch-persecution. Two pair of spectacles were duly despatched to him after our return to Cairo; and M. Lacaze there exhibited a capital sketch of the picturesque, white-bearded face, with the straight features and the nutcracker chin, deep buried in the folds of a huge red shawl.

The son, Sulaymn, has been espoused to a cousin older, they say, than himself; and he seems in no hurry to conclude the marriage. He would willingly accompany us to Egypt, but he is the father's favourite, and the old man can do nothing without him. A youth of about eighteen, and even more handsome than his sire, he has the pretty look, the sloping shoulders, the soft snaky movements, and the quiet, subdued voice of a nice girl. During the first marches he dressed in the finery of the Bedawin—the brilliant head-kerchief, the parti-coloured sandals, and the loose cloak of expensive broadcloth. The "toggery" looked out of place as the toilettes of the Syrian ladies who called upon us in laces and blue satins amid the ruins of Ba'lbek. Although all the hired camels belonged, as is customary, to the tribe, not to the Shaykh, the latter was accompanied by the usual "Hieland tail;" by his two nephews, Hammd and Nji, the latter our head-guide, addicted to reading, writing, and lying; by his favourite and factotum, Abdullah, an African mulatto, Muwallid or "house-born;" and by his Wakl ("agent"), a big black slave, Abdullah Mohammed, ready of tongue and readier of fist. Lastly, I must mention one Audah Adayni, a Huwayti bred in the Baliyy country, a traveller to Cairo, passing intelligent and surpassing unscrupulous. Confidential for a consideration, he told all the secrets of his employers, and it is my firm conviction that he was liberally paid for so doing by both parties of wiseacres.

The immediate objective of this, our last march, was the Bad plain, of which we first heard at Shaghab. I purposed subsequently to collect specimens of a traditional coal-mine, to which his Highness the Viceroy had attached the highest importance. Then we would march upon the Mchoura of the ancients, the mediaeval El-Marwah or Z Marwah, the modern Marwt-cum-Ab'l-Mar. Finally, we would return to El-Wijh, vi the Wady Hamz, inspecting both it and the ruins first sighted by MM. Marie and Philipin.

On Friday, March 29th, I gave a breakfast, in the wooden barracks, to the officers of the Sinnr and the officials of the port. After which, some took their opium and went to sleep; while others, it being church-day, went to Mosque. We ran out of El-Wijh at 1.45 p.m., our convoy consisting of fifty-eight camels, forty-four of which were loaded; seven were dromedaries, and an equal number carried water. All had assured us that the rains of the two past years had been wanting: last winter they were scanty; this cold season they were nil. In truth, the land was suffering terribly from drought. Our afternoon was hot and unpleasant: about later March the Haw el'-Uwwah, a violent sand-raising norther, sets in and lasts through a fortnight. It is succeeded, in early April, by the calms of El-Ni'm ("the Blessings"), which, divided into the Greater and the Less, last forty days. After that the summer—Jehannum!

From the raised and metalled bank, upon which the Burj stands, we descended to the broad mouth of the Wijh valley, draining the low rolling blue-brown line of porphyritic hillocks on the east. To our right lay the sparkling, glittering white plain and pool, El-Mellhah, "the salina." After an hour and a quarter of sandy and dusty ride, we passed through a "gate" formed by the Hamrat-Wijh, the red range which, backing the gape of the valley and apparently close behind the town, strikes the eye from the offing. Here the gypsum, ruddy and mauve, white and black, was underlaid by granite in rounded masses; and the Secondary formation is succeeded by the usual red and green traps. Though this part of our route lies in El-Tihmah, which, in fact, we shall not leave, we are again threading the Wady Sadr of the northern Shafah-range. A pleasant surprise was a fine vein of sugary quartz trending north-south: at that period we little suspected the sub-range to the south—perhaps also the northern—of being, in places, one mighty mass of "white stone."

After covering six miles in an hour and three-quarters, exaggerated by the guides to three, we suddenly sighted the inland fort. Its approach is that of a large encamping-ground, and such, indeed, it is; the Egyptian pilgrim-caravan here halts on the fourth day from El-Muwaylah. The broken, untidy environs, strewed with bones and rubbish, show low mounds that mean ovens; stone rings, where tents are pitched; and the usual graves, amongst which a reverend man, Shaykh Slih, rests in a manner of round tower. The site is, in one point at least, admirably well-chosen, a kind of carrefour where four valleys and as many roads meet; and thus it commands the mouths of all the gorges leading inland.

Riding up to the fort, we were welcomed by its commandant, Lieutenant Nsir Ahmed, a peculiarly good specimen of his arm, the infantry. His garrison consists of thirteen regulars, whose clean uniforms show discipline, and whose hale and hearty complexions testify to the excellence of the water and the air. The men are paid annually by the treasurer of the Hajj-caravan. They are supposed to be relieved after seven years; but they have wives and families; and, like the British soldier in India half a century ago, they are content to pass their working lives in local service. The commandant showed us over his castle, which was in excellent order; and brewed coffee, which we drank in the cool porch of the single gate. He then led us about the neighbourhood, and ended with inviting the Syyid, Furayj, and the Wakl Mohammed Shahdah to a copious feast.

The fort is the usual square, straight-curtained work of solid masonry, with a circular bastion at each angle, and a huge arched main-entrance in the western faade. It is, in fact, one of the buildings that belong to the solid, sturdy age of Sultn Selim, and of the Sinnn Pasha so well known about Damascus. An inscription, with an illegible date, bears the name of Ahmed ibn Tayln, the founder of the Taylunide dynasty, in A.D. 868—884: this is another proof that the Mamlk Soldans were lords of the soil; and that, even in the ninth century, South Midian was a province, or a dependency, of Egypt. Moreover, we picked up, to the north-east of the work, old and well-treated scori, suggesting a more ancient settlement. Perhaps it was the locale preferred by the proprietors of the slaves who worked the inner mines, hidden from view and from the sea-breeze by the hills.

The castle being perfectly commanded by the heights behind, the circular towers to the east have crests raised in that direction, giving them a spoon-shape, and a peculiar aptitude for arresting every cannon-ball coming from the west. The Bedawin, however, have no great guns; and apparently this shelter has been added since Wellsted's day.[EN#54] To the curtains are attached the usual hovels, mat, palm-leaf, and walls of dry stone or mud, which here, as at Palmyra, inevitably suggest wasp-nests. The northern side is subtended by three large cisterns, all strengthened at the inner angles by the stepped buttresses first noticed when we were exploring Maghir Shu'ayb.

Up the valley and behind the fort, or to the north-east, lie the palm-plantations, the small kitchen-gardens, and the far-famed wells which, dug by Sultn Selim and repaired by Ibrahim Pasha in A.D. 1524 (?), supply the Hajj-caravan. The sandy bed, disposed east-west, is streaked, dotted, and barred with walls and outcrops of the hardest greenstone porphyry; and those which run north-south must arrest, like dykes, the flow of water underground. One of these reefs is laboriously scraped with Bedawi Wusm, and with Moslem inscriptions comparatively modern. The material is heavy, but shows no quartz; whereas the smaller valleys which debouch upon the northern or right bank of the main line, display a curious conformation of the "white stone," contorted like oyster shells, and embedded in the trap.

Of the six wells, revetted with masonry and resembling in all points those of Ziba, four, including El-Tawlah, the deepest, supply brackish water; and the same is the case with a fifth inside the fort, close to the chapel of his Holiness, Shaykh Abubakr. The water, however, appeared potable; and perhaps cleaning out and deepening might increase the quantity. The sweet element drunk by the richards of El-Wijh comes from the Bir el-Za'farnyyah ("of Saffron"), and from its north-eastern neighbour, El-Ajwah ("the Date-paste"). The latter measures four or five fathoms; and the water appears under a boulder in situ that projects from the southern side. The reader will now agree with me that El-Wijh is not too drouthy for a quarantine-ground.

The plots of green meat lie about the water, sheltered from the burning sun by a luxuriant growth of date-trees. The Egyptian is the best man in the world for dabbling in mud; and here, by scraping away the surface-sand, he has come upon a clayey soil sufficiently fertile to satisfy his wants. The growth is confined to tobacco, potatoes, and cabbages, purslain (Portulaca, pourpier), radishes, the edible Hibiscus, and tomatoes, which are small and green. Lettuces do not thrive; cucumbers and water-melons have been tried here and up country; and—man wants little in Midian.

We set out early on the next day (5.30 a.m., March 30th) in disorderly style. The night had been cool and comfortable, dry and dewless; but the Shaykhs were torpid after the feast, and the escort and quarrymen had been demoralized by a week of sweet "do-nothing." Striking up the Wady el-Wijh, which now becomes narrow and gorge-like, with old and new wells and water-pits dotting the sole, we were stopped, after half an hour's walk, by a "written rock" on the right side of the bed. None of the guides seemed to know or, at any rate, to care for it; although I afterwards learnt that Admiral M'Killop (Pasha), during his last visit to El-Wijh, obtained a squeeze of the inscriptions. Wellsted (II. x.) erroneously calls this valley "Wd el-Moyah," the name of a feature further south—thus leading me to expect the find elsewhere. Moreover, he has copied the scrawls with a carelessness so prodigious, that we failed at first to recognize the original. He has hit upon the notable expedient of massing together in a single dwarf wood-cut (Vol. II. p. 189) what covers many square feet of stone; and I was fool enough to republish his copy.[EN#55]

A tall, fissured rock, of the hardest porphyritic greenstone, high raised from the valley-sole, facing north-west, and reducible to two main blocks, is scattered over with these "inscriptions," that spread in all directions. Most of them are Arab Wusum, others are rude drawings of men and beasts, amongst which are conspicuous the artless camel and the serpent; and there is a duello between two funny warriors armed with sword and shield. These efforts of art resemble, not a little, the "Totem" attempts of the "Red Indians" in North and South America. There are, however, two scrapings evidently alphabetic, and probably Nabathan, which are offered to the specialists in epigraphy: six appear in Wellsted's illustration, especially that with a long line above it, near the left and lower corner of the cut. M. Lacaze and I copied the most striking features in our carnets; he taking the right or southern side and leaving the other block to me. But the results did not satisfy us; and on April 10th I sent him with M. Philipin to make photographs. The latter, again, are hardly as satisfactory as they might be, because the inscriptions have not been considered the central points of interest. We shall pass during our present journey many of these Oriental "John Joneses" and "Bill Browns:" they will suggest the similar features of Sinaitic Wady Mukattib, which begot those monstrous growths, "The One Primaeval Language" and "The Voice of Israel from Mount Sinai."[EN#56] From the "written rock" the caravan travelled westward up an easy watercourse, "El-Khaur," distinguished as El-Shiml ("the Northern"): it winds round by the north, and we shall descend it to-morrow. The mule-riders left the Wady el-Wijh, which extends some two hours eastward, and struck to the east-south-east. The bridle-path, running up the left bank of an ugly rocky torrent, the Wady Zurayb, presently reaches a plateau undulating in low rises. Burnt with heat, almost bare of trees, and utterly waterless, it is the model of a mining country: elevate it from five hundred to nine thousand feet, and it would be the living (or dead) likeness of a Peruvian cerro. The staple material, porphyritic trap, shows scatters of quartz and huge veins, mostly trending north-south: large trenches made, according to the guides, by the ancients, and small cairns or stone piles, modern work, were also pointed out to us.

Crossing the heads of sundry watercourses, we fell into the Wady Umm el-Karyat:[EN#57] it begins, as is here the rule, with a gravelly bed, nice riding enough; it then breaks into ugly rocky drops and slides, especially at the hill shoulders, where thorn-trees and other obstacles often suggest that it is better to dismount; and, finally, when nearing the mouth, it becomes a matured copy of its upper self on an enlarged scale. Presently we turned to the left over a short divide, and stared with astonishment at the airy white heap, some two hundred feet high, which, capped and strewed with snowy boulders, seemed to float above our heads. The Wady-bed at our feet, lined along the left bank with immense blocks of similar quartz, showed the bases of black walls—ruins. "Behold Umm el-Karyt!" exclaimed Nj, the guide, pointing with a wave of the arm, his usual theatrical gesture, to the scene before us. We could hardly believe our eyes: he had just assured us that the march from the fort is four hours, and we had ridden it in two hours and fifteen minutes (= six miles and a quarter).

Dismounting at once, and ordering the camp to be pitched near the ruins, we climbed up the south-eastern face of the quartz-hill, whose appearance was a novelty to us. Instead of being a regular, round-headed cone, like the Jebel el-Abyaz for instance, the summit was distinctly crateriform. The greater part of the day was spent in examining it, and the following are the results. This Jebel el-Mar showed, for the first time during the whole journey, signs of systematic and civilized work. In many parts the hill has become a mere shell. We found on the near side a line of air-holes, cut in the quartz rock, disposed north-south of one another; and preserving a rim, sunk like that of a sarcophagus, to receive a cover. Possibly it was a precaution against the plunder which ruined Brazilian Gongo Soco. The Arabs have no fear of these places, as in Wellsted's day, and Abdullah, the mulatto, readily descended into one about twelve feet below the surface. Messrs. Clarke and Marie explored the deepest by means of ropes, and declared that it measured sixty feet. They had to be ready with their bayonets, as sign of hyenas was common; and the beast, which slinks away in the open is apt, when brought to bay in caverns, to rush past the intruder, carrying off a jawful of calf or thigh.

This pit had two main galleries, both choked with rubbish, leading to the east and west; and the explorers could see light glimmering through the cracks and crevices of the roof—these doubtless gave passage to the wild carnivore. In other parts the surface, especially where the earth is red, was pitted with shallow basins; and a large depression showed the sinking of the hollowed crust. Negro quartz was evidently abundant; but we came to the conclusion that the rock mostly worked was, like that of Shuwk, a rosy, mauve-coloured schist, with a deep-red fracture, and brilliant colours before they are tarnished by atmospheric oxygen. It abounds in mica, which, silvery as fish-scales, overspreads it in patches; and the precious metal had probably been sought in the veinlets between the schist and its quartz-walling. In two pieces, specks, or rather paillettes, of gold were found lightly and loosely adhering to the "Mar ;" so lightly, indeed, that they fell off when carelessly pocketed Veins of schist still remained, but in the galleries they had been followed out to the uttermost fibril.

Reaching the crateriform summit, we found that the head of the cone had either "caved in," or had been carried off bodily to be worked. Here traces of fire, seen on the rock, suggested that it had been split by cold affusion. A view from the summit of this burrowed mound gave us at once the measure of the past work and a most encouraging prospect for the future. We determined that the Marwah or "quartz-hill" of Umm el-Karyt was the focus and centre of the southern mining region, even as the northern culminates in the Jebel el-Abyaz. Further experience rejected the theory, and showed us half a dozen foci and centres in this true quartz-region. The main hill projects a small southern spur, also bearing traces of the miner. The block of green trap to the south-west has a capping and a vein-network of quartz: here also the surface is artificially pitted. Moreover, there are detached white-yellow pitons to the north-east, the east, and the south; whilst a promising hillock, bearing nearly due north, adjoins the great outcrop. All have rounded conical summits and smooth sides, proving that they are yet virgin; and here, perhaps, I should prefer to begin work.

At our feet, and in north lat. 26 13', lies the settlement, in a short gravelly reach disposed north-west to south-east; and the bed is enclosed by a rim of trap and quartz hills. The ruins lie upon a fork where two gorges, running to the east and the north-east, both fall into the broad Wady el-Khaur, and the latter feeds the great Wady el-Miyh, the "Fiumara of the Waters," of which more presently. The remains on the upper (eastern) branch-valley show where the rock was pulverized by the number of grinding implements, large and small, coarse and fine, all, save the most solid, broken to pieces by the mischievous Bedawi. Some are of the normal basalt, which may also have served for crushing grain; others are cut out of grey and ruddy granites: a few are the common Mahrkah or "rub-stones," and the many are handmills, of which we shall see admirable specimens further on. One was an upper stone, with holes for the handle and for feeding the mill: these articles are rare. I also secured the split half of a ball, or rather an oblate spheroid, of serpentine with depressions, probably where held by finger and thumb; the same form is still used for grinding in the Istrian island of Veglia. This is one of the few rude stone implements that rewarded our careful search.

The north-eastern, which is the main Wady, has a sole uneven with low swells and falls. It was dry as summer dust: I had expected much in the way of botanical collection, but the plants were not in flower, and the trees, stripped of their leaves, looked "black as negroes out of holiday suits." Here lie the principal ruins, forming a rude parallelogram from north-east to south-west. The ground plan shows the usual formless heaps of stones and pebbles, with the bases of squares and oblongs, regular and irregular, large and small. There were no signs of wells or aqueducts; and the few furnaces were betrayed only by ashen heaps, thin scatters of scori, and bits of flux—dark carbonate of lime. Here and there mounds of the rosy micaceous schist, still unworked, looked as if it had been washed out by the showers of ages. The general appearance is that of an ergastulum like Umm mil: here perhaps the ore was crushed and smelted, when not rich enough to be sent down the Wady for water-working at the place where the inland fort now is.

The quarrymen, placed at the most likely spots, were ordered to spall rock for specimens: with their usual perversity, they picked up, when unwatched, broken bits of useless stuff; they spent the whole day dawdling over three camel-loads, and they protested against being obliged to carry the sacks to their tents. Meanwhile Nj, who had told marvellous tales concerning a well in the neighbouring hills, which showed the foundations of houses in its bowels, was directed to guide Lieutenant Amir. He objected that the enormous distance would be trying to the stoutest mule, and yet he did not blush when it was reached after a mile's ride to the southwest (240 mag.). It proved to be a long-mouthed pit, sunk in the trap hill-slope some four fathoms deep, but much filled up; and, so far from being built in, it had not even the usual wooden platform. Eastward of it, and at the head of the Wady Shuwaytanah, "the Devilling," lay a square ruin like a small Mashghal of white quartz: here also were three stones scribbled with pious ejaculations, such as Y Allah! and Bismillah, in a modern Kufic character.

Umm el-Karyt, "the Mother of the Villages," derives her title, according to the Baliyy, from the numerous offspring of minor settlements scattered around her. We shall pass several on the next day's march, and I am justified in setting down the number at a dozen. The Wady el-Kibli, the southern valley, was visited by Lieutenants Amir and Yusuf on April 8th, when we were encamped below it at Ab'l-Mar[EN#58]. After riding about six miles to the north-north-west, down the Wady el-Mismh and up the Wady el-Argah, they reached, on the left bank of the latter, the ruins known as Mar el-Khaur. The remains of the daughter are those of the "mother." There are two large heaps of quartz to the north and to the south-east of the irregular triangle, whose blunted apex faces northwards: the south-eastern hill shows an irregular Fahr ("pit") in the reef of white stone, leading to a number of little tunnels.

I lost all patience with Wellsted,[EN#59] whose blunders concerning the Umm el-Karyt are really surprising, even for a sailor on camel-back. He reaches the ruins after ten miles from the fort, when they lie between twelve and thirteen from El-Wijh. He calls the porphyritic trap "dark granite." He makes the grand quartz formation "limestone, of which the materials used for constructing the town (coralline!) appear to have been chiefly derived." He descends the "caves" with ropes and lights; yet he does not perceive that they are mining shafts and tunnels, puits d'air, adits for the workmen, and pits by which the ore was "brought to grass." And the Hydrographic Chart is as bad. It locates the inland fort six miles and three-quarters from the anchorage, but the mine is thrust eastwards ten miles and a quarter from the fort; the latter distance being, as has been seen, little more than the former. Moreover, the ruins are placed to the north, when they lie nearly on the same parallel of latitude as El-Wijh. Ahmed Kaptn fixed them, by solar observations, in north lat. 26 13', so that we made only one mile of southing. It ignores the porphyritic sub-range in which the "Mother of the Villages" lies: and it brings close to the east of it the tall peaks of the Tihmat-Balawyyah' which, from this point, rise like azure shadows on the horizon. Finally, it corrupts Umm el-Karyt to Feyrabat. "Impossible, but true!"

The night at the ruins was dry and cool, even cold; disturbed only by the coughing of the men, the moaning of the camels, and the bleating of the sheep. We would willingly have spent here another day, but water and forage were absolutely wanting; and the guides assured us that even greater marvels, in the shape of ruins and quartz-reefs, lay ahead. We set out shortly after five a.m. (March 31st): the morning was pearly and rosy; but puffs of a warmer wind announced the Dufn (local Khamsin), which promised us three days of ugly working weather. Leaving Umm el-Karyt by the upper or eastern valley-fork, we soon fell into and descended its absorbent, the broad (northern) Wady el-Khaur. Upon the right bank of the latter rose the lesser "Mountain of Quartz," a cone white as snow, looking shadowy and ghostly in the petit jour, the dim light of morning. For the next two hours (= seven miles) we saw on both sides nothing but veins and outcrops of "Mar," worked as well as unworked. All was bare and barren as the gypsum: the hardy Aushaz (Lycium), allied to the tea-tree, is the only growth that takes root in humus-filled hollows of the stone.

Presently the quartz made way for long lines and broad patches of a yellow-white, heat-altered clay, often revetted with iron, and passably aping the nobler rock: from one reef I picked up what appeared to be trachyte, white like that of Shaghab. The hill-casing of the valley forms no regular line; the heaps of black, red, and rusty trap are here detached and pyramidal, there cliffing as if in presence of the sea. The vegetation improved as we advanced; the trees were no longer black and heat-blasted; and we recognized once more the dandelion, the thistle, the senna, the Aristida grass, and other familiar growths. Tents, shepherds, and large flocks of goats and kids showed that water was not distant; and, here in Baliyy-land, even the few young women seemed to have no fear of the white face.

After a slow, dull ride in the burning and sickly wind, we crossed the head of our former route, Wady Zurayb the Ugly, and presently entered the Wady el-Kubbah ("of the Cupola,"), where our immediate destination rose before us. It is a grisly black saddleback, banded with two perpendicular stripes of dark stone that shines like specular iron; and upon its tall northern end, the pommel, stands a small ruin, the oft spoken of "Dome." Sketches of paths wind up the western flank; but upon this line, we were assured, no ruins are seen save a few pits. So we rounded the block by the north, following the broad Wady to the Myat el-Kubbah, water-pits in the sand whose produce had not been libelled when described as salt, scanty, and stinking. The track then turned up a short, broad branch-Wady, running from south to north, and falling into the left bank of the "Dome Valley:" a few yards brought us to a halt at the ruins of El-Kubbah. We had pushed on sharply during the last half of the way, and our morning's ride had lasted four hours (= thirteen miles).

The remains lie in the uneven quartzose basin at the head of the little lateral watercourse: they are built with good cement, and they evidently belong to the race that worked the "Mother of the Villages;" but there is nothing to distinguish them except the ruins of a large Skiyah ("draw-well"), with its basin of weathered alabaster. We were perplexed by the shallow conical pits in the porphyritic trap, to the east and west of the "Dome Hill;" the ground is too porous for rain cisterns, and the depth is not sufficient for quarrying. The furnaces showed the normal slag; but the only "metals" lying around them were poor iron-clay, and a shining black porphyry, onyxed with the whitest quartz. There were, however, extensive scatters of Negro, which had evidently been brought there; and presently we found large heaps of rosy-coloured, washed-out schist.[EN#60] These explained the raison d'tre of this dreary and dismal hole.

Meanwhile the juniors ascended the rocky "Kubbah" hill, which proved to be a small matter of 120 feet (aner. 29.34) above the valley-sole (aner. 29.46). The "Dome" was nothing but a truncated circle of wall, porphyry and cement, just large enough to hold a man; the cupola-roof, if there ever had been one, was clean gone; and adjoining it yawned a rock-cut pit some fifteen feet deep. I came to the conclusion that here might have been a look-out where, possibly, the "bale-fire" was also lit. The "ascensionists" brought back a very healthy thirst.

We rested till noon in the filmy shade of the thorn-trees. The caravan was at once sent forward to reach the only good water, lying, said the guides, many a mile beyond. We had made up our minds for a good long march; and I was not a little vexed when, after half an hour, we were led out of the Wady el-Kubbah, whose head, our proper line, lies to the north, into its eastern influent, the Wady el-Dasnah. Here, after an afternoon "spell" of forty-five minutes (= two miles and a half), and a total of four hours and forty-five minutes (= fifteen miles and a half), a day nearly half wasted, we found the tents pitched. The heat had strewed the Wady with soldiers and quarrymen; and the large pit in the bed, supplying "water sweet as the Nile,', showed a swarm of struggling blacks, which the Egyptian officers compared with Arft or "demons;" we with large pismires. A sentinel was placed to prevent waste and pollution at the Myat el-Dasnah, whose position is in north lat. 26 23'.

April Fools' day was another that deserved to be marked with a white stone. I aroused the camp at 3.30 a.m., in order that the camels might load with abundance of water: we were to reach the springs of Umm Gezz, but a presentiment told me that we might want drink. At that hour the camp was a melancholy sight: the Europeans surly because they had discussed a bottle of cognac when they should have slept; the good Sayyid without his coffee, and perhaps without his prayers; Wakl Mohammed sorrowfully attempting to gnaw tooth-breaking biscuit; and the Bedawin working and walking like somnambules. However, at 5.10 a.m. we struck north, over a low divide of trap hill, by a broad and evidently made road, and regained the Wady el-Kubbah: here it is a pleasant spectacle rich in trees, and vocal with the cooing of the turtle-dove. After an hour's sharp riding we reached its head, a fair round plain some two miles across, and rimmed with hills of red, green, and black plutonics, the latter much resembling coal. It was a replica of the Sadr-basin below the Hism, even to the Khuraytah or "Pass" at the northern end. Here, however, the Col is a mere bogus; that is, no raised plateau lies beyond it.

We crossed a shallow prism and a feeding-basin: an ugly little gorge then led to the important Wady Sirr. We are now in the hydrographic area of the Wady Nejd,[EN#61] which, numbering influents by the dozen, falls into the Salbah (Thalbah) of Sharm Dumaghah. The Sirr, though still far from its mouth, is at least three miles broad; and the guides speak of it as the Asl el-Balawyyah, or "Old Home of the Baliyy." The view from its bed is varied and extensive. Behind us lies the Tihmat-Balawyyah, the equivalent of the Ghts of North Midian, from the Zahd to the Shrr. The items are the little Jebel Antar, which, peeping over the Fiumara's high left bank, is continued south by the lower Libn. The latter attaches to the higher Libn, whose triad of peaks, the central and highest built of three distinct castellations, flush and blush with a delicate pink-white cheek as it receives the hot caresses of the sun. We are now haunted by the Libn, which, like its big brother the Shrr, seems everywhere to accompany us.

Beyond the neutral ground, over which we are travelling, appear in front the pale-blue heights bordering the Wady Nejd to the north-west, and apparently connected with the Jebelayn el-Jayy in the far north (30 mag.). To the north-east the view is closed by the lumpy Jebel el-Kurr (the Qorh of Arabian geographers?); followed southwards by the peaked wall of the Jebel el-Ward, and by El-Safhah with its "Pins." For the last eighteen miles we had seen no quartz, which, however, might have veined the underground-rock. The sole of the Sirr now appeared spread with snow, streaked and patched with thin white paint; the stones were mostly water-rolled, the discharge of valleys draining from afar. The ground was unpleasantly pitted and holed; the camels were weak with semi-starvation and the depressing south-wester; Lieutenant Amir put his dromedary to speed, resulting in a nose-flattening fall; and the Sayyid nearly followed suit.

This is our second day of Khamsin; yet on the northern slope of the great Fiumara we meet the cool land-wind. Either it or the sea-breeze generally sets in between seven and eight a.m., when the stony, sandy world has been thoroughly sunned. The short divide beyond the far bank of the Sirr is strewn with glittering mica-schist that takes the forms of tree-trunks and rotten wood; and with dark purple-blue fragments of clay-slate looking as if they had been worked. A counterslope of the same material, which makes excellent path-metal placed us in the Wady Rubayyigh ("the Little Rbigh" or "Green-grown Spring"), a short and proportionally very broad branch draining to the Sirr. Here large outcrops of quartz mingled with the clay slate. A few yards further it abutted upon a small gravelly basin with ruins and a huge white reef of "Mar," which caused a precipitate dismounting. We had marched only four hours (= thirteen miles); but the loss of time has its compensations. Our Arabs, who consider this a fair day's work, will now, in hopes of a halt, show us every strew of quartz and every fragment of wall. They congratulated us upon reaching a part of their country absolutely unvisited by Europeans.

The site of our discovery was the water-parting of the Wady Rubayyigh with the Wady Rbigh, both feeders of the Sirr; this to the north, that to the south. The ruins, known as Umm el-Harb, "Mother of Desolation," are the usual basement-lines: they lie in the utterly waterless basin, our camping-ground, stretching west of Mar Rubayyigh, the big white reef. This "Mother" bears nearly north of Umm el-Karyt, in north lat. 26 33' 36" (Ahmed Kaptn): her altitude was made upwards of a thousand feet above sea-level (aner. 28.92)

At Umm el-Harb we saw for the first time an open mine, scientifically worked by the men of old. They chose a pear-shaped quartz-reef; the upper dome exposed, the converging slopes set and hidden in green trap to the east and west, and the invisible stalk extending downwards, probably deep into Earth's bowels. They began by sinking, as we see from certain rounded apertures, a line of shafts striking north-north-east (45—50 mag.) to south-south-west across the summit, which may measure one hundred and twenty yards. The intervening sections of the roof are now broken away; and a great yawning crevasse in the hill-top gives this saddleback of bare cream-coloured rock, spangled with white where recently fractured, the semblance of a "comb" or cresting reef.

We descended into this chasm, whose slope varies from a maximum of 45 to a minimum of 36 at the south. The depth apparently did not exceed thirty feet, making allowance for the filling up of centuries; but in places the hollow sound of the hammer suggested profounder pits and wells. I should greatly doubt that such shallow sinking as this could have worked out any beyond the upper part of the vein. Here it measures from six to eight feet in diameter, diminishing to four and a half and even three below. The sloping roof has been defended from collapse by large pillars of the rock, left standing as in the old Egyptian quarries; it shows the clumsy but efficient practice that preceded timbering. The material worked was evidently the pink-coloured and silver-scaled micaceous schist; but there was also a whitish quartz, rich in geodes and veinlets of dark-brown and black dust. The only inhabitants of the cave, bats and lizards (Gongylus ocellatus, L., etc.), did not prevent M. Lacaze making careful study of the excavation; the necessity of brown shadows, however, robs the scene of its charm, the delicate white which still shimmers under its transparent veil of shade. Similar features exist at El-Muwaylah and El-Aujah, in the wilderness of Kadesh: but those are latomi; these are gold mines.[EN#62]

Another sign of superior labour is shown by the quartz-crushing implements. Here they are of three kinds: coarse and rough basaltic lava for the first and rudest work; red granite and syenitic granite for the next stage; and, lastly, an admirable handmill of the compactest grey granite, smooth as glass and hard as iron. Around the pin-hole are raised and depressed concentric circles intended for ornament; and the "dishing" towards the rim is regular as if turned by machinery. We have seen as yet nothing like this work; nor shall we see anything superior to it. All are nether millstones, so carefully smashed that one can hardly help suspecting the kind of superstitious feeling which suggested iconoclasm. The venerable Shaykh Afnn showed a touching ignorance concerning the labours of the ancients; and, when lectured about the Nabat (Nabathans), only exclaimed, "Allah, Allah!"

In the evening we ascended the porphyry hills to the north of the little camping-basin; and we found the heights striped by two large vertical bands of quartz. The eastern vein, like the Jebel el-Mar, has a north-east to south-west strike (45 mag.); the western runs east-west with a dip to south. From the summit we could see that the quartz-mountain, as usual an exaggerated vein, is hemmed in on both sides by outcrops and hills of trap, black, green, and yellow, which culminate eastward in the Jebel el-Gurb (Jurb). We had a fine bird's-eye view of the Wady Rbigh, and of our next day's march towards the Shafah Mountains: the former was white with quartz as if hail-strewn. Far beyond its right bank rose an Ash'hab, or "grey head," which seemed to promise quartzose granite: it will prove an important feature. Before sleeping, I despatched to El-Wijh two boxes of micaceous schist and two bags of quartz, loads for a pair of camels.



Chapter XVII. The March Continued to El-BadDescription of the Plain Badais.



After the exciting scenes of the last three days, this stage was dull riding, and consequently, I fear, it will be dull reading as well as writing. We set off afoot betimes (5.10 a.m.) in the still warm morning that augured Khamsn: the third day was now telling heavily on man and beast. A walk of ten minutes led down the rough line of the little water-course draining the Mar Rubayyigh to the Wady Rbigh. At a re-entering angle of the junction, a shallow pit was sunk; the sand became moist and red, and presently it was underlaid by a rubble of porphyritic trap. Nothing more!

We then crossed the Wady Rbigh, another of the short broad valleys which distinguish this section of South Midian. The bed sides, especially the right, are heaps and mounds of snowy quartz, with glittering crowns of block and boulder: all prove to be veins in the grey granite, whose large coarse elements are decomposed by weather. The dark and rusty walls of the valley also discharge the white stone in shunts and shoots: here and there they might be mistaken for Goz ("sand-banks") heaped up by the wind, except that these are clad in thin vegetation, whereas the "Maru'" is mostly mother-naked. We halted here for rest and to examine these features: despite the Khamsn, the Great Gaster became querulous; hunger was now the chief complaint, and even the bon ordinaire had lost much of its attraction. A harmless snake was killed and bottled; its silver robe was beautifully banded with a line, pink as the circles of the "cobra coral," which ran along the whole length of the back. It proved to be a new species; and Dr. Gunther named it Zamenis elegantissimus.

Beyond the Rbigh, we ascended a lateral valley, whence a low divide led to the Wady el-Bahrah ("of the Basin"), another feeder of the Sirr. It was also snow-white, and on the right of the path lay black heaps, Hawwt, "ruins" not worth the delay of a visit. Then began a short up-slope with a longer counterslope, on which we met a party of Huwaytt, camel-men and foot-men going to buy grain at El-Wigh. Another apparition was a spear-man bestriding a bare-backed colt; after reconnoitering us for some time, he yielded to the temptations of curiosity. It afterwards struck us that, mounted on our mules, preceded and followed by the Shaykhs riding their dromedaries, we must have looked mighty like a party of prisoners being marched inland. The horseman was followed by a rough-coated, bear-eared hound of the kind described by Wellsted[EN#63] as "resembling the English mastiff"—he did not know how common is the beast further north. The Kalb gasr (jasur) or "bold dog," also called Kalb el-hmi, or "the hot" (tempered), is found even amongst the Bedawin to the east of the Suez Canal; but there the half-bred is more common than the whole-blood. It is trained to tend the flocks; it never barks, nor bites its charges; and it is said to work as well as the shepherd-dog of Europe.

The Wady Mulaybij shows fine specimens of mica dor in the quartz-vein streaking the slate: it deceived all the caravan, save those who tested it with their daggers. The bed, after forming a basin, narrows to a sandy gut, smooth and pleasant riding; and, after crossing several valley-heads, the path debouches upon the Wady Abl-Gezaz. This "Father of Glass," though a day and a half's march from the sea, is even broader than the great Sirr to which it is tributary. Its line, which reminded us of the Dmah, is well marked by unusually fine vegetation: and the basin bears large clumps of fan-palm, scattered Daum-trees, the giant asclepiad El-Ushr,[EN#64] thickets of tamarisk and scatters of the wild castor-plant, whose use is unknown to the Arabs. Water wells up abundantly from a dozen shallow pits, old and new, in the sand of the southern or left bank. Here the flow is apparently arrested by a tall buttress of coarse granite, red with orthose, and sliced by a trap-dyke striking north-south.

Our day's work had been only four slow hours; but we were compelled to await the caravan, which did not arrive till after noon. It had passed round by the Wady Rbigh, into and up the "Father of Glass;" in fact, it had described an easy semicircle; while we had ridden in a series of zigzags, over rough and difficult short cuts. A delay was also necessary for our mappers to connect this march with their itinerary of the central region. Already the Wady Mulaybij had shown us the familiar peak and dorsum of Jebel Raydn; and we had "chaffed" Furayj about his sudden return home. From our camp in the Ab'l-Gezz, the Ziglb block of Shaghab bore nearly north (350 mag.); and the adjoining Jebel el-Aslah, also a blue cone on the horizon, rose about two degrees further north.

After the big mess-tent had been duly blown down, and the usual discipline had been administered for washing in the drinking-pool; we crossed to the left of the Wady by way of an evening stroll, and at once came upon an atelier of some importance. The guides seemed to ignore its existence, so we christened it Mashghal Al'l-Gezz. On the slope of a trap-hill facing the Wady el-Ghami's, the southern valley which we had last crossed, stood a square of masonry scattered round with fragments of pottery, glass, and basalt. Below it, on the "mesopotamian" plain, lay the foundations of houses still showing their cemented floors. The lowlands and highlands around the settlement looked white-patched with mounds, veins, and scatters of quartz. The evening was stillness itself, broken only by the cries of the Kats, which are now nesting, as they flocked to drink; and the night was cool—a promise, and a false promise, that the Khamsn had ended on its usual third day.

The next morning (April 3rd) showed us El-Bada', the whole march lying up the Wady Ab'l-Gezz, which changes its name with every water. The early air was delightfully fresh and brisk, and the cattle stepped out as if walking were a pleasure: yet the Arabs declared that neither camels nor mules had found a full feed in the apparently luxuriant vegetation of the Fiumara-bed. The tract began badly over loose sandy soil, so honeycombed that neither man nor beast could tread safely: the Girdi (Jirdi), or "field rat," is evidently nocturnal like the jerboa, during the whole journey we never saw a specimen of either. A yellow wolf was descried skulking among the bushes, and a fine large hare was shot; porcupine-quills were common, and we picked up the mummy of a little hedgehog. The birds were swift-winged hawks and owls, pigeons and ring-doves; crows again became common, and the water-wagtail was tame as the Brazilian thrush, Joo de Barros: it hopped about within a few feet of us, quite ignoring the presence of Frenchmen armed with murderous guns. I cannot discern the origin of the pseudo-Oriental legend which declares that the "crow of the wilderness" (raven) taught Cain to bury his brother by slaying a brother crow, and scraping a grave for it with beak and claw. The murderous bird then perched upon a palm-tree, whose branches, before erect, have ever drooped, and croaked the truth into Adam's ear: hence it has ever been of evil augury to mankind. The hoopoe, which the French absurdly call coq de montagne, also trotted by the path-side without timidity; and the butcher-bird impudently reviewed the caravan from its vantage-ground, a commanding tree. The large swift shot screaming overhead; and the cries of the troops of Merops, with silver-lined wings, resembled those of the sand-grouse.

After some five miles the "Father of Glass" changed his name to Ab Daumah (of the "one Theban Palm"). Porphyritic trap lay on both sides of us. To the right rose the Jebel Ukbal, whose grey form (El-Ash'hab) we had seen from the heights above Umm el-Harb: the whole range of four heads, forming the south-western rim of the Bad saucer, is known as El-Akbil. Below these blocks the Wady-sides were cut into buttresses of yellow clay, powdered white with Sabkh, or "impure salt." Charred circlets in the sand showed where alkali had been burned: the ashes, packed in skins, are shipped at El-Wijh for Syria, where they serve to make soap. The Bedawin call it Aslah (Athlah); the Egyptians Ghasslah ("the washer"), because, when rubbed in the hands, its succulent shoots clean the skin. Camels eat it, whereas mules refuse it, unless half-starved. This plant apparently did not extend all up the Wady. The water, where there is any, swings under the left bank; an ample supply had been promised to us, with the implied condition that we should camp at this Mahattat el-Urbn ("Halting place of the Arabs"), after a marching day of two hours! Seeing that we rode on, the Baliyy declared that they had searched for the two principal pools, and that both were dry, or rather had been buried by the Bedawin. But, with characteristic futility, they had allowed me to overhear their conversation; and the word was passed to the soldiers, who at once filled themselves and their water-skins.

Hitherto we had been marching south of east. Presently, where the pretty green Wady el-Surm falls into the left bank, we turned a corner, and sighted in front, or to the north, the great plain of Bad. The block, El-Akbil, had projected a loop of some ten miles to be rounded, whereas a short cut across it would not have exceeded three. And now the Wady Ab Daumah abruptly changed formation. The red and green traps of the right side made way for grey granite, known by its rounded bulging blocks on the sides and summit, by its false stratification, by its veins of quartz that strewed the sand, and by its quaint weathering—one rock exactly resembled a sitting eagle; a second was a turtle, and a third showed a sphinx in the rough. The Bad plain is backed by a curtain so tall that we seemed, by a common optical delusion, to be descending when we were really ascending rapidly.

Anxiety to begin our studies of the spot made the ride across the basin, soled with rises comfortably metalled, and with falls of sand unpleasantly loose and honeycombed, appear very long. The palm-clump, where men camp, with its two date-trees towering over the rest, receded as it were. At last, after a total of four hours and forty-five minutes (= sixteen miles), we dismounted at the celebrated groves, just before the ugly Khamsn arose and made the world look dull, as though all its colours had been washed out.

The dates form a kind of square with a sharp triangle to the south, upon the left bank of the thalweg, which overflows them during floods. The enceinte is the normal Arab "snake-fence" of dry and barked branches, which imperfectly defends the nurseries of young trees and the plots of Khubbayzah ("edible mallows") from the adjoining camping-place of bald yellow clay. The wells, inside and outside the enclosure, are nine; three stone-revetted, and the rest mere pits in the inchoate modern sandstone. The trees want thinning; the undergrowth is so dense as to be impenetrable; but the heads are all carefully trimmed, the first time we have seen such industry in Midian. The shade attracts vipers, chiefly the Echis: and I was startled by hearing the gay warble of the Bulbul—a nightingale in Arabia!

The next day was devoted to inspecting this far-famed site, with the following results. We have already seen a Bada' and a Bad'a , whilst there is a Bad'ah [EN#65] further north. We are now at a Bad which fulfils all the conditions required by the centre and head-quarters of "Thamuditis." The site of the Bjat Bad, "the Wide Plain of Bad," as it is distinguished by the Arabs, represents, topographically speaking, a bulge in the Wady Nejd, before it becomes the Wady Ab Daumah, between the Shafah Mountains to the east and the Tihmah range seawards. The latitude is 26 45' 30" = 0 31' 30" north of El-Wijh [Footnote: Ahmed Kaptn's observation of Polaris. The (Bades) of Ptolemy is in north lat. 25 30'.]. From its centre, a little south of our camping-place, the Jebel Ziglb of Shaghab, distant, according to Ykt, one march, bears 32, and the Aslah (Athlah) cone 30 (both mag.): it lies therefore south of Shuwk, with a little westing. The altitude is upwards of twelve hundred feet above sea-level (aner. 28.72). The size of the oval is about nine statute miles from north to south, where the main watercourse breaks; and twelve miles from east to west, giving an area of some 108 square miles. The general aspect of the basin suggests that of El-Haur; the growth is richer than the northern, but not equal to that of the southern country. The ruins belong to the Maghir Shu'ayb category, and the guides compare the Hawwt with those of Madin Slih.

Such is the great station on the Nabathan overland highway between Leuk' Kme and Petra; the commercial and industrial, the agricultural and mineral centre, which the Greeks called the Romans, Badanatha (Pliny, vi. 32); and the medival Arab geographers, Bad Ya'kb, in the days when the Hajj-caravan used to descend the Wadys Nejd and the "Father of Glass." Now it is simply El-Bad: the name of the "Prophet" Jacob, supposed to have visited it from Egypt or Syria, being clean forgotten.

The rolling plain is floored with grey granite, underlying sandstones not unlike coral-rag, and still in course of formation. Through this crust outcrop curious hillocks, or rather piles of hard, red, and iron-revetted rock, with a white or a rusty fracture—these are the characteristics of the basin. The lower levels are furrowed with their threads of sand, beds of rain-torrents discharged from the mountains; and each is edged by brighter growths of thorn and fan-palm. The fattening Salb grass is scattered about the water; the large sorrel hugs the Fiumara-sides; the hardy Aushaz-thorn (Lycium), spangled with white bloom and red currants, which the Arabs say taste like grapes, affects the drier levels; and Tanzubs, almost all timber when old, become trees as large as the Jujube.

The Bjat is everywhere set in a regular rim of mountains. The Shafah curtain to the north is fretted with a number of peaks, called as usual after their Wadys;[EN#66] the west is open with a great slope, the Wady Manab, whose breadth is broken only by the "Magrh" Naza'n, a remarkable saddleback with reclining cantle. It is distant a ride of two hours, and we have now seen it for three marches. A little south of east yawns the gorge-mouth of the Wady Nejd, the upper course of the Ab'l-Gezz: a jagged black curtain, the Jebel Dausal, forms its southern jaw. Further south the Tihmah Mountains begin with the peaky Jebel el-Kurr, another remarkable block which has long been in sight. Its neighbour is the bluff-headed Jebel el-Wsil of Marwt; whilst the trap-blocks, already mentioned as the Jibl el-Akbil, finish the circle.

The better to understand the shape of the ruins, we will ascend the irregular block which rises a few furlongs to the north-east of the palm-orchard. It has only three names: Araygat Bad ("Veinlet of Bad"); Zeba'yat Bad, "the Low-lying (Hill) of Bad;" and Shahb el-Bm, "the Ash-coloured (Hill) of the Owl." I will prefer the latter, as we actually sighted one of those dear birds on its western flank. It is an outcrop of grey granite, pigeon-holed by weather, and veined by a variety of dykes. Here we find greenstone breccia'd with the blackest hornblende; there huge filons of hard, red, heat-altered clays, faced with iron, whilst the fracture is white as trachyte; and there filets of quartz, traversing large curtains and sheets of light-coloured argils. This was evidently the main quarry: the sides still show signs of made zigzags; and the red blocks and boulders, all round the hill, bear the prayers and pious ejaculations of the Faithful. The characters range between square Kufic, hardly antedating four centuries, and the cursive form of our day. Some are merely scraped; others are deeply and laboriously cut in the hard material, a work more appropriate for the miner than for the passing pilgrim.

From the ruined look-out on the summit the shape of the city shows a highly irregular triangle of nine facets, forming an apex at the east end of our "Owl's Hill:" the rises and falls of the ground have evidently determined the outline. The palm-orchard, whose total circumference is five hundred and thirty-six metres, occupies a small portion of its south-eastern corner; and our camping-place, further east, was evidently included in the ancient enceinte. The emplacement, extending along the eastern bank of the main watercourse, is marked by a number of mounds scattered over with broken glass and pottery of all kinds: no coins were found, but rude bits of metal, all verdigris, were picked up north of the palm-orchard. Here, too, lay queer fish-bones, with tusks and teeth, chiefly the jaws of Scarid and Sparid (seabreams).[EN#67]

Descending the Shahb el-Bm, and passing a smaller black and white block appended to its south-south-western side, we now cross to the left bank of the main drain. Here lies the broken tank, the normal construction of El-Islam's flourishing days. It is a square of thirty-two metres, whose faces and angles do not front the cardinal points. At each corner a flight of steps has been; two have almost disappeared, and the others are very shaky. The floor, originally stone-paved, is now a sheet of hard silt, growing trees and bush: dense Tanzub-clumps (Sodada decidua), with edible red berries, sheltering a couple of birds'-nests, suggested a comparison between the present and the past. At the east end is the Makhzan el-Myah, or "smaller reservoir," an oblong of 7.80 by 6.60 metres: the waggon-tilt roof has disappeared, and the fissures show brick within the ashlar. Along the eastern side are huge standing slabs of the coarse new sandstone with which the tank is lined: these may be remains of a conduit. Around the cistern lies a ruined graveyard, whose yawning graves supplied a couple of skulls. A broken line of masonry, probably an aqueduct, runs south-south-east (143 mag.) towards the palms: after two hundred metres all traces of it are lost.

The mining industry could not have been a prominent feature at Bad, or we should have found, as in Shaghab and Shuwk, furnaces and scori. Yet about the tank we lit upon large scatters of spalled quartz, which, according to the Baliyy, is brought from the neighbouring mountains. Some of it was rosy outside: other specimens bore stains of copper; and others showed, when broken, little pyramids of ore. Tested in England, it proved to be pure lead, a metal so rare that some metallurgists have doubted its existence: the finds have been mostly confined to auriferous lands. The blow-pipe soon showed that it was not galena (the sulphide), but some of it contained traces of silver. Without knowing the rarity of these specimens, certain American officers at the Citadel, Cairo, compared them with the true galenas of the Dr-Forian mines, called Mahattat el-Riss (the "Deposit of Lead"), in the Wady Gotam, three days north-east of the capital El-Fashr. The African metal is rich. Large quantities, analyzed by Gastinel Bey, gave fifty per cent. of lead, and of silver fifty dollars per ton; but the distance from any possible market will reserve these diggings for the use of the future. Some were sanguine enough to propose smelting the metal at Khartm, where Riss is ever in demand; and accordingly, for a time Dar-For was "run," by a mild "ring," against Midian.

The plain, I have said, is everywhere broken by piles of stone forming knobby hills. Leaving the outlined sphinx to the right, we ascended a second block, which rises on the west of the chief watercourse, further down than the "Owl's Hill." This Tell el-Ahmar ("Red Hill"), alias Ja'dat Bad (the "Curved Hill of Bada'"), is a quoin of grey granite bluff to the south-west. The north-eastern flank shows the normal revetment of ruddy and black heat-altered grit, which gives a red back to the pale-sided, drab-coloured heap. Over the easy ascent is run a zigzag path; half-way, up it passes piles of stone that denote building, and it abuts at the summit upon one of those "look-outs" which are essentially Arab.

Again, to the south-east of the palms is the Huzaybat Bad, the "(Isolated) Hillock of Bad," a low ridge of naked grey granite, much scaled and pigeon-holed. On the plain to its north stretch regular lines of stone, probably the remnants of a work intended to defend the city's eastern approach. South of the Huzaybah appear the usual signs of an atelier: these workshops are doubtless scattered all around the centre; but a week, not a day, would be required to examine them. On the very eve of our departure the guides pointed northwards (350 mag.) to a "Mountain of Mar," called El-Arayft, and declared that it contained a Zarbat el-Nasr, or "enclosure made by the Nazarenes." I offered a liberal present for specimens; all, however, swore that the distance ranged from two to three hours of dromedary, and that no mounted messenger could catch us unless we halted the next day.

The Bedawin, still relegated to the upper country, were sending their scouts to ascertain if the water-supply was sufficient in Bad plain. The adjacent valleys were dotted with she-camels and their colts. The adult animal here sells for twelve to thirty dollars. During the cotton-full in Egypt, and the cotton-famine of the United States, they fetched as many pounds sterling at the frontier; and the traders of El-Wijh own to having made two hundred per cent., which we may safely double. I asked them why they did not import good stallions from the banks of the Nile; and the reply was that of the North Country—the experiment had ended in the death of the more civilized brutes. This is easily understood: the Baliyy camel seems to live on sand.

The camp was visited by a few Bedawi stragglers, and the reports of their immense numbers were simply absurd. The males were not to be distinguished, in costume and weapons, from their neighbours; and the "females" were all dark and dressed in amorphous blue shirts. At last came an old man and woman of the Huwaytt tribe, bringing for sale a quantity of liquefied butter. They asked a price which would have been dear on the seaboard; and naively confessed that they had taken us for pilgrims,—birds to be plucked. But sheep and goats were not to be found in the neighbourhood: yesterday we had failed to buy meat; and to-day the young Shaykh, Sulaymn, was compelled to mount his dromedary and ride afar in quest of it. The results were seven small sheep, which, lean with walking, cost eleven dollars; and all were slaughtered before they had time to put on fat.

During our stay a pitiable object, with a hide- bandaged lower leg, often limped past the tents; and, thinking the limb broken, I asked the history of the accident. Our hero, it appears, was a doughty personage, famed for valour, who had lately slipped into the Juhayni country with the laudable intention of "lifting" a camel. He had, indeed, "taken his sword, and went his way to rob and steal," under the profound conviction that nothing could be more honourable—in case of success. He was driving off the booty, when its master sallied out to recover the stolen goods by force and by arms. Both bared their blades and exchanged cuts, when the Baliyy found that his old flamberge was too blunt to do damage. Consequently he had the worse of the affair; a slicing of the right hand forced him to drop his "silly sword." He then closed with his adversary, who again proved himself the better man, throwing the assailant, and at the same time slashing open his left leg. The wounded man lay in the "bush" till he gathered strength to "dot and go one" homewards. Amongst these tribes the Diyat, or "blood-money," reaches eight hundred dollars; consequently men will maim, but carefully avoid killing, one another.

The evening of our halt, with its lurid haze and its ominous brooding stillness, was distinguished by a storm, a regular Arab affair, consisting of dust by the ton to water by the drop. This infliction of the "fearful fiend, Samiel, fatal to caravans," began in the west. A cloud of red sand advanced like a prairie-fire at headlong speed before the mighty rushing wind, whose damp breath smelt of rain; and presently the mountain-rim was veiled in brown and ruddy and purple earth-haze. A bow in the eastern sky strongly suggested, in the apparent absence of a shower, refraction by dust—if such thing be possible. We were disappointed, by the sinister wind, in our hopes of collecting a bottle of rain-water for the photographer; nor did the storm, though it had all the diffused violence of a wintry gale, materially alter the weather. The next two nights were brisk and cool, but the afternoons blew either the Khamsn ("south-wester") or the Azyab ("south-easter").

The only Bedawi tradition concerning the Bada' plain is the following. Many centuries ago, some say before the Apostle, the Baliyy held the land, which was a valley of gardens, a foretaste of Irem; the people were happy as the martyrs of Paradise, and the date-trees numbered two thousand. The grove then belonged to a certain Ibn Mukarrib, who dwelt in it with his son and a slave, not caring to maintain a large guard of Arabs. Consequently he became on bad terms with the Ahmidah-Baliyy tribe, who began systematically to rob his orchard. At last one of a large plundering party said to him, "O Ibn Mukarrib! wilt thou sell this place of two thousand (trees), and not retreat (from thy bargain)?" He responded "Buy!" (i.e. make an offer). The other, taking off his sandal, exclaimed. "With this!" and the proprietor, in wrath, rejoined, "I have sold!"

Ibn Mukarrib then arose and went forth, with his son and the slave, to the place whence came the water (that fed the palms): this he closed up, and fared towards the north. One day it so happened that the three were sitting under the shade of a Marakh-tree and eating its berries. Quoth the sire to the son, "Say, which is the sweeter, the eating of the Marakh fruit or the dates of our orchard?" And the youth rejoined, "O my father! far sweeter is the eating of the fruit of our palm-yard;" when his sire at once arose and slew him with the sword (to wipe away the disgrace of such want of manliness).

Then Ibn Mukarrib turned to the slave, and asked him the question which he had asked of his son. Whereupon the slave replied in this quatrain:

"Eating wild grain in the house of respect; And not eating dates in the house of contempt: And walking in honour but a single day; And not sitting in disgrace for a thousand years!"

Ibn Mukarrib, pleased with these words, forthwith adopted the slave; both marched to the north and dwelt there till the end of their days. The palm-trees, deprived of irrigation, all died; and Bjat-Bad, the beautiful, became a wilderness. About twenty years ago, the wells were reopened and the dates were replanted. So much for the past: as for the future, we may safely predict that, unless occupied by a civilized people, the Bad plain will again see worse times. Nothing would be easier than to rebuild the town, and to prepare the basin for irrigation and cultivation; but destruction is more in the Bedawi line.



Chapter XVIII. Coal a "Myth"—March to Marwt—Arrival at the Wady Hamz.



Before leaving Bad I was careful to make all manner of inquiries concerning stone-coal; and the guides confirmed the suspicions which had long suggested themselves. His Highness the Viceroy had laid great stress upon the search: the first question to me on return was whether the fuel had been found; and a shade of disappointment appeared when the answer distinctly declared it a myth.

This coal, it appears, is an old story. My learned friend Sprenger wrote to me (June 13, 1877): "It is likely that west of Marwa, on the way to Hawr (which lies on the sea-shore), coal is found: I confess that the prospect of discovering much coal in Arabia does not appear to me very great; still it would be worth while to make inquiries." Subsequently (December 8, 1877), he gave up all hopes of the pure mineral, but he still clave to bituminous schist. El-Mukaddasi (p. 103),[EN#68] treating of the marvels of the land, has the following passage unconnected with those which precede and succeed it:—"A fire arose between El-Marwat and El-Haur, and it burned, even as charcoal (el-Fahm) burns." Probably Sprenger had read, "and it (the stone) burned as charcoal burns," suggesting that the houses and huts were built of inflammable material, like the bituminous schist of the Brazil; and that the Arabs were surprised to find them taking fire. Evidently, however, the text refers to an eruption in one of the many Harrahs or volcanic districts. El-Mukaddasi describes the "houses artful (farihn, alluding to the Thamdites in the Koran, xxvi. 149), and made of admirable stone (alabaster?); over the doors were knots (Ukd), and ornaments (Turh), and carvings (Nuksh)."

Landing at El-Wijh, I at once consulted our intelligent friend, the Wakl Mohammed Shahdah. He had sent for a camel-load of the stuff, which, he declared, would not burn, although it had burned his money. He then travelled in person to the Jebel el-Muharrak ("Burnt Mountain"), five short marches inland from El-Bad plain, and behind its northern curtain, the Jibl el-Shafah. According to him, El-Muharrak is part of the great Harrah; and the unexplored Jaww, which lies north (?) of it, is a prolongation of the Hism plateau, here belonging to the Balawyyah or Baliyy-land. The mountain is tall and black, apparently consisting of the "coal." Near its summit lies the Bir el-Shif' ("Well of Healing"), a pit of cold sulphur-water, excellent for the eyes; and generally a "Pool of Bethesda," whither Arabs flock from afar. At Ab'l-Gezz, Mohammed destroyed all our surviving hopes by picking up a black stone which, he declared, belonged to El-Muharrak. It was schist, with a natural fracture not unlike coal, and weathered into the semblance of wood: unfortunately it was hard as iron, and it did not contain an atom of bitumen.

At Bad old Shaykh Afnn, whose tents are now pitched one day ahead of us, was taken into consultation upon the subject. He confirmed these statements of the Wakl, adding that the Shafah Mountains are a mere ridge, not the seaward walls of a plateau, and that the land east of them is exactly that which we have already traversed. He had bathed in the sulphur-water; he spoke of brimstone being picked up on the hill-flanks, and he had heard of El-Kohl (stibium, collyrium, antimony) being found about El-Muharrak.[EN#69]

These details, apparently authentic, did not tempt me to waste precious time upon El-Muharrak. I do not yet despair, as has been said, of finding coal in Arabia; but we must hardly expect volcanic ground to yield it.

Our preparations for a march southwards were made under difficulties. The Baliyy evidently like the prospect of some 6 per diem; and do not like the idea of approaching the frontier, where their camels may be stolen. Every silly, childish pretext was used to suggest delay. We ought not to move without seeing the "Nazarenes' Ruin" at El-Arayft. Again, I had sent a certain Salim, a cousin of the Shaykh, with orders for fresh supplies from El-Wijh: he was certain to miss us if we marched. Still again, old Afnn's dromedary had a thorn in the foot—u. s. w.

Nevertheless, an order was given for the return march on April 5th.

No matter how philosophical the traveller may be, I defy him not to feel some emotion when, his Desert work being duly done, he throws his leg over the saddle, and turn the animal's head homewards—towards London. Such was our pleasant predicament; for, though the dtour would be considerable, and the delay still more so, I could distinguish the bourne at the far end of the very long perspective.

We were now in excellent marching order, not, however, including the mules, of which two had broken down with sore backs, and the others were breaking fast. The rveill sounded at 3 to 3.30 p.m.; the "general" followed at four; and the start took place immediately afterwards. The camels are wretched animals, that work equally badly full and fasting: when hungry, they break their halters to graze along the path; and when gorged they are too lazy to go beyond a saunter of two miles an hour. Yet they can work well when pushed: the man Sa'lim came up with us on the evening of the fourth day, after a forced march of thirty-two hours.

We took the track which crosses the Bjat-Bad to the south-east. For a short way it was vilely rat-eaten; presently it issued upon good, hard, stony ground; and, after four miles, it entered the Wady el-Marwt. This gorge, marked by the Jebel Wsil, a round head to the north, is a commonplace affair of trap and white clay; broad, rough, and unpicturesque. The sole shows many piles of dry stone, ruins of "boxes," in which the travelling Arab passes the night, whilst his camels are tethered outside. The watercourse heads in a Khuraytah, the usual rock-ladder; we reached it after eleven miles' riding. Nj, the sea-lawyer of the party, assured us that we had not finished a third of the way, when two-thirds would have been nearer the truth.

The Wady sides and head showed traces of hard work, especially where three veins of snowy quartz had been deeply cut into. The summit of the Col, some 2100 feet above sea-level, carried a fine reef of "Mar," measuring eight feet at the widest, and trending 332 (mag.) Around it lay the usual barbarous ruins, mere basements, surrounded by spalled stone: from this place I carried off a portable Kufic inscription. The view down the regular and tree-dotted slope of the Wady el-Marwt, as far as the flats of Bad, was charming, an Argelz without its over-verdure.

From the Col two roads lead to our day's destination. The short cut to the right was reported stony: as most of our mules were casting their irons and falling lame, I avoided it by the advice of Furayj, thereby giving huge offence to old Afnn. We followed the long slope trending to the Wady el-Kurr, which drains the notable block of that name. Seeing the Wakl, and the others in front, cutting over the root to prevent rounding a prodigiously long tongue-tip, I was on the qui vive for the normal dodge; and presently the mulatto Abdullah screamed out that the Nakb must be avoided, as it was all rock. We persisted and found the path almost as smooth as a main road. The object was to halt for the night at a neighbouring water-hole in the rocks; and, when their trick failed, the Baliyy with a naive infantine candour, talked and laughed over their failure, sans vergogne and within earshot.

Despite the many Zawbahs ("dust-devils"), this was one of our finest travelling days. After the usual ante-meridian halt, we pushed on down the valley, meeting only a few donkey-drivers. At 2.15 p.m. (seven hours = twenty miles and a half), we reached the beautiful Ayn el-Kurr, some ten direct miles east of the Wady Rbigh; and the caravan was only one hour behind us. This Wady is a great and important affluent of the Wady el-Miyh already mentioned. The reach where we camped runs from north to south; and the "gate" of porphyritic trap, red, green, yellow, and white with clay, almost envelops the quartz-streaked granite. The walls are high enough to give shade between eight a.m. and 2.15 p.m.; and the level sole of the cleanest sand is dotted, near the right side, with holes and pools of the sweetest water. Here "green grow the rushes," especially the big-headed Kasb (Arundo donax); the yellow-tipped Namas or flags (Scirpus holoschnus) form a dense thicket; the Ushr, with its cork-like bark which makes the best tinder, is a tree, not a shrub; and there are large natural plantations of the saffron-flowered, tobacco-like Verbascum, the Arab's Uzn el-Humr ("Donkey's Ear"). Add scattered clusters of date-trees, domineering over clumps of fan-palm; and, lastly, marvellous to relate, a few hundred feet of greensward, of regular turf—a luxury not expected in North-Western Arabia—a paradise for frogs and toads (Bufo vulgaris), grasshoppers, and white pigeons; and you will sympathize with our enjoyment at the Ayn el-Kurr. In such a place extensive ruins of the "Old Ones" were to be expected. Apparently there is no trace of man beyond Wasm on the rocks; a few old Bedawi graves in a dwarf Wady inflowing from the west; a rude modern watercourse close above its mouth, and Arab fences round the trimmed dates and newly set palm shoots.

During the afternoon the Shaykhs came to us with very long faces. At this season, and as long as the Baliyy are in the Shafah uplands, the almost deserted frontier districts, which we are about to enter, suffer from the Gaum, or razzia, of the neighbouring Anezah and the Juhaynah;—the two tribes, however, not mixing. The bandits, numbering, they say, from fifty to sixty, mounted on horses and dromedaries, only aspire to plunder some poor devil-shepherd of a few camels, goats, and muttons. They never attack in rear; they always sleep at night, save when every moment is precious for "loot"-driving; and their weapons, which may be deadly in the narrows, are despicable in the open country.

I suspected at first that this was another "dodge" to enhance the services of our Arabs, but the amount of risk we were to run was soon found out by consulting Furayj. He said that we must march in rear of the caravan for a day or two; and that such attacks were possible, but only once in a hundred cases. There might have been treachery in camp; the Egyptian officers suggested that a Baliyy scout could have been sent on to announce the approach of a rich caravan. Accordingly, I ordered an evening review of our "Remingtons;" and chose a large mark purposely, that the Bedawi lookers-on might not have cause to scoff. The escort redeemed many a past lche, by showing that their weapons had been kept bright and clean, and by firing neatly enough. The Baliyy, who had never seen a breech-loader, were delighted; but one of our party so disliked the smell of powder, that he almost quarrelled with me for bringing him into such imminent deadly risk. He was hardly to be blamed; his nerves had been terribly shaken by a viper killed in his tent.

Next morning (April 6th) saw the most unpleasant of our marches. The young Shaykh Sulaymn, accompanied by his cousin Slim, set out in the dark as claireurs: they were supposed to lead eight or ten of the best matchlock-men, whereas I doubt whether the whole camp contained that total. Presently it appeared that they were alone, and the farce was hardly kept up through the next day. At 5.15 a.m. we followed them, marching militairement, as my friend Sefer Pasha had strongly advised at Cairo. It is no joke to follow starveling beasts whose best speed seldom attains two miles and a half per hour. However, the effect was excellent: never had there been so little straggling; never had the halting-places been reached in such good time and good order.

A pleasant surprise awaited us in the grandest display of quartz that we had yet seen. The descent of the Wady el-Kurr seemed to be as flat, stale, and profitless as possible, when "Mar" appeared on the left side in mounds, veins, and strews. Presently we turned south, and passed the brackish well, El-Hufayrah ("the Little Pit"), in a bay of the left bank, distant about eight miles from our last camp. Here the whole Wady, some two miles broad, was barred with quartz, in gravel of the same rock, and in veins which, protruding from the dark schist, suggested that it underlies the whole surface. Nothing more remarkable than the variety of forms and tints mingling in the mighty mass—the amorphous, the crystallized, the hyaline, the burnt; here mottled and banded, there plain red and pink, green and brown, slaty and chocolate, purple, kaolin-white; and, rarest of all, honeycomb-yellow. The richest part was at the Majr el-Kabsh ("Divide of the Ram"), where we alighted and secured specimens.

From this point the Wady el-Kurr flows down the right side of its valley, and disappears to the west; while the far side of the Majr shows the Wady Gmirah (Kmirah), another influent of the Wady el-Miyh. Various minor divides led to the Wady el-Laylah, where ruins were spoken of by our confidant, Audah, although his information was discredited by the Shaykhs. Quartz-hills now appeared on either side, creamy-coated cones, each capped by its own sparkle whose brilliancy was set off by the gloomy traps which they sheeted and topped. In some places the material may have been the usual hard, white, heat-altered clay; but the valley-sole showed only the purest "Mar." The height of several hills was nearly double that of the northern Jebel el-Abyaz; and the reef-crests were apparently unworked.