shall follow it till it is received into the mighty arms of the
Wady Hamz, some three miles from the sea. After riding eight
hours, we sighted the long line of Daum-palms which announce the
approach to El-Birkah, "the Tank." Here the huge Fiumara,
sweeping grandly from north-east to south-west, forms a charming
narrow and a river-like run about a mile and a half
long--phenomenal again in sun-scorched Arabia. The water,
collecting under the masses of trap which wall in the left bank,
flows down for some distance in threads, a ciel ouvert, and
finally combines in a single large blue-green pool on the right
side. A turquoise set in enamel of the brightest verdure, it
attracts by its dense and shady beds of rushes a variety of
water-fowl--one of our Bedawin killed a black-headed duck with a
bullet, which spoilt it as a specimen. About the water-run are
dwarf enclosures, and even water-melons were sown; unhappily the
torrent came down and carried all away.

We halted near the upper spring at 8.20 a.m., after the usual
accident which now occurred daily about that hour. On this
occasion Lieutenant Yusuf's shoe stuck in the stirrup when he was
dismounting from an unsteady mule; the animal threw him, and he
had a somewhat narrow escape from being dragged to death. Man and
beast would have lingered long over the pleasures of watering and
refection, but I forced them onwards at nine a.m., whilst the hot
sun-rays were still tempered by the cool land-breeze. The threads
of water and the wet ground extended some two kilometres beyond
the Birkat. Further on was another fine "gate," whose eastern or
right jamb was the Jibal el-Tibgh, fronting the Wady M'jirmah.
The narrows showed two Arab wells, with the usual platform of dry
trunks that make a footing round the mouth. There was no break in