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The Land of Midian — Volume 2 by Sir Richard Francis Burton
page 14 of 325 (04%)
struck up the Wady Shuwak, an influent that runs northwards to
the Damah's left bank. On the stony ground above the right side
of this Fiumara lay six circles of stones, disposed in a line
from north-east to south-west: they may have been ruins of Hufrah
("water-pits"). As we rose the Nullah surface was pied with white
flowers, the early growth which here takes the place of
primroses. I had some difficulty in persuading our good friend
Furayj, who had not seen the country for fifteen years, to engage
as guide one of the many Bedawin camel-herds: his course seemed
to serpentine like that of an animal grazing--he said it was
intended to show the least stony road--and, when he pointed with
the wave of the maimed right hand, he described an arc of some
90 . The Sulaymi lad caught the nearest camel, climbed its sides
as you would a tree, and, when the animal set off at a lumbering
gallop, pressed the soles of his feet to the ribs, with exactly
the action of a Simiad; clinging the while, like grim Death, to
the hairy hump.

After some six miles we attempted a short cut, a gorge that
debouched on the left bank of the Shuwak valley. It showed at
once a complete change of formation: the sides were painted with
clays of variegated colours, crystallized lime and porphyritic
conglomerates, tinted mauve-purple as if by manganese. Further
on, the path, striking over broken divides and long tracts of
stony ground, became rough riding: it was bordered by the usual
monotonous, melancholy hills of reddish and greenish trap, whose
slaty and schist-like edges in places stood upright. On the
summit of the last Col appeared the ruins of an outwork, a large
square and a central heap of boulder-stones. Straight in front
rose the block that backs our destination, the Jebel el-Sani', or
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