have already seen from the sea. Its northern foot-ranges are the
pale-white and jagged 'Afayr, whose utter isolation makes it
interesting; and the low and long, the dark and dumpy Jebel
Tufayyah. It is separated by a broad valley from its southern
neighbour, the Jebel el-Ughlub, or El-Ghalab as some call it.
This typical block consists chiefly of a monstrous "Parrot's
Beak" of granite, continued by a long dorsum to the south. Its
outliers number four. These are, first, the Umm Natash, two sets
of perpendicular buttresses pressed together like sausages or
cigars. Then comes the Talat Muhajjah, a broken saddleback, whose
cantle from the south-east appears split into a pair of
steeple-like boulders--an architect of Alexander the Great's day
would have easily cut and trimmed them into such towers as the
world has never seen. Follows the Umm el-Natakah, bristling like
the fretful porcupine, and apparently disdaining to receive the
foot of man; while the last item, the Jebel el-Khausilah, has
outlines so thoroughly architectural that we seem to gaze upon a
pile of building.

About five miles behind or south of El-Khausilah runs the Wady
Hamz. Thus the two blocks, El-Ward and El-Ughlub, form the Safhah
proper. The line is continued, after a considerable break, by the
two blue and conical peaks in the Tihamat-Jahaniyyah, known as
the Jebelayn el-Ral. They are divided and drained to the Wady
Hamz by the broad Wady el-Sula'; and the latter is the short cut
down which the Egyptian Hajj, returning northwards from
El-Medinah, debouches upon the maritime plain of South Midian.

The Wady Laylah, draining both the Shafah and the Tihamah ranges,
including the block El-Ward, assumes, as usual, various names: we