(centurion), with a garrison, are there stationed." As the Nabata
were vassals of Rome, and the whole region had been ceded to the
Romans (Byzantines) by a chief of the Beni Kuda' tribe, this
Yuzbashi or "military commandant" was probably a Roman.

El-Haura, like most of the ruined settlements upon this coast,
shows two distinct "quarters;" a harbour-town and what may be
called a country-town. The latter, whose site is by far the more
picturesque and amene, lay upon a long tongue of land backing the
slope of the sea-cliff, and attached to the low whitish hillocks
and pitons rising down south. It is now a luxuriant orchard of
emerald palms forming three large patches. Behind it swells a
dorsum of golden-yellow sand; and the horizon is closed by ranges
of hills and highlands, red and white, blue and black. Our eyes
are somewhat startled by the amount of bright and vivid green:
for some reason, unknown to us, the shore is far more riant than
the northern section; and the land might be called
quasi-agricultural. The whole coast seems to be broken with
verdant valleys; from the Wady el-'Ayn, with its numerous
branches beautifying the north, to the Wady el-Daghaybaj in the
south, supplying water between its two paps.

On the evening of our arrival, we landed in a shallow bay bearing
north-north-east (30 mag.) from the roads where the corvette lay
at anchor; and walked a few yards inland to the left bank of the
Wady el-Samnah, the unimportant Fiumara draining low hills of the
same name. The loose sand is everywhere strewed with bits of
light porous lava, which comes from the Harrat el-Buhayr, a bluff
quoin to the north-west. About El-Haura, I have said, the
volcanic formations, some sixty miles inland on the parallel of