After the march had extended to seven hours (= 18 miles), there
were loud complaints about its length, the venerable 'Afnan
himself begging us to spare his camels--which, being interpreted,
meant spoiling our pockets. I therefore gave orders to camp in
the broad and open Wady Laylah. We were far from water, but the
evening was pleasant, and the night was still more agreeable.

At five a.m. next day (April 7th) we rode up the Wady Laylah,
which gave us another surprise, and an unexpected joy, in the
shifting scenery of the Jibal el-Safhah. The "Mountains of the
Plain," so called because they start suddenly from a dead level,
are a section of the Tihamat-Balawiyyah range; yet they are
worthy links of a chain which boasts of a Sharr. Rising hard on
our left, beyond the dull traps that hem in the Wadys, these
blocks, especially the lower features, the mere foot-hills,
assume every quaintest nuance of hue and form. The fawn-grey
colour, here shining as if polished by "slickensides," there dull
and roughened by the rude touch of Time, is a neutral ground that
takes all the tints with which sun and moon, mist and cloud,
paint and glaze the world: changeable as the chameleon's, the
coating is never the same for two brief hours. The protean shape,
seen in profile and foreshortened from the north or south,
appears a block bristling with "Pins" and points, horns and
beaks. Viewed from the east the range splits into a double line,
whose ranks have never been "dressed" nor sized; whilst a
diagonal prospect so alters their forms and relations that they
apparently belong to another range.

The background, lying upon the most distant visible plane, is the
white-streaked and regular wall of the Jebel el-Ward, which we