ruins known as Maru 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-Karayat 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 Kaptan 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 Tihamat-Balawiyyah' which, from
this point, rise like azure shadows on the horizon. Finally, it
corrupts Umm el-Karayat to Feyrabat. "Impossible, but true!"