between Leuke' Kome and Petra; the commercial and industrial,
the agricultural and mineral centre, which the Greeks called
the Romans, Badanatha (Pliny, vi. 32); and the
mediaval Arab geographers, Bada Ya'kub, in the days when the
Hajj-caravan used to descend the Wadys Nejd and the "Father of
Glass." Now it is simply El-Bada: the name of the "Prophet"
Jacob, supposed to have visited it from Egypt or Syria, being
clean forgotten.

The rolling plain is floored with grey granite, underlying
sandstones not unlike coral-rag, and still in course of
formation. Through this crust outcrop curious hillocks, or rather
piles of hard, red, and iron-revetted rock, with a white or a
rusty fracture--these are the characteristics of the basin. The
lower levels are furrowed with their threads of sand, beds of
rain-torrents discharged from the mountains; and each is edged by
brighter growths of thorn and fan-palm. The fattening Salib grass
is scattered about the water; the large sorrel hugs the
Fiumara-sides; the hardy 'Aushaz-thorn (Lycium), spangled with
white bloom and red currants, which the Arabs say taste like
grapes, affects the drier levels; and Tanzubs, almost all timber
when old, become trees as large as the Jujube.

The Bujat is everywhere set in a regular rim of mountains. The
Shafah curtain to the north is fretted with a number of peaks,
called as usual after their Wadys;[EN#66] the west is open with a
great slope, the Wady Manab, whose breadth is broken only by the
"Magrah" Naza'an, a remarkable saddleback with reclining cantle.
It is distant a ride of two hours, and we have now seen it for
three marches. A little south of east yawns the gorge-mouth of