green and gold, flashed like a gem thrown from shrub to shrub:
this oiseau mouche is found scattered throughout Midian; we saw
it even about El-Muwaylah, but I had unfortunately twice
forgotten dust-shot. The Egyptian Rakham (percnopter), yellow
with black-tipped wings; a carrion-eater, now so rare, and the
common brown kite, still so common near civilized Cairo, soared
in the sky; while the larger vultures, perching upon the
rock-ridges, suggested Bedawi sentinels. The ravens, here as
elsewhere, are a plague: flights of them occupy favourite places,
and they prey upon the young lambs, hares, and maimed birds.

We advanced another five miles, and crossed to the southern side
of the actual torrent-bed, whose banks, strewed with a quantity
of dead flood-wood entangling the trees, and whose flaky clays,
cracked to the shape of slabs and often curling into tubes of
natural pottery, show that at times the Hisma must discharge
furious torrents. We camped close to the Damah at the foot of the
Jebel el-Balawi; the water, known as Mayat el-Jebayl ("of the
Hillock"), lay ahead in a low rocky snout: it was represented as
being distant a full hour, and the mules did not return from it
till three had passed; but thirty minutes would have been nearer
the truth. The Nile-drinkers turned up their fastidious noses at
the supply, but Lieutenant Amir, who had graduated in the rough
campaigning-school of the Sudan, pronounced it "regular."

The nighting-place on the Damah was as pretty and picturesque as
the Majra was tame and uncouth. While the west was amber clear,
long stripes of purpling, crimson, flaming cloud, to the south
and the east, set off the castled crags disposed in a semicircle
round the Wady-head; and the "buildings" appeared art-like