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 Bada 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 Khamsin 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