easterly: in this direction a huge strew of ore-mass and rubbish
covers the slope which serves as base to the perpendicular reef.
The Negro quartz, which must have formed half the thickness, had
been carried bodily away. If anything be left for the moderns it
is hidden underground: the stone, blasted in the little outlier,
looked barren. Not the least curious part of this outcrop is the
black thread of iron silicate which, broken in places, subtends
it to the east: some specimens have geodes yielding brown powder,
and venal cavities lined with botryoidal quartz of amethystine
tinge. In other parts of the same hills we found, running along
the "Mara," single and double lines of this material, which
looked uncommonly like slag.

The open Wady Mismah showed, to the east of our camp, the ruins
of a large settlement which has extended right across the bed: as
the guides seemed to ignore its existence, we named it the
Kharabat Aba'l-Maru. Some of the buildings had been on a large
scale, and one square measured twenty yards. Here the peculiarity
was the careful mining of a granitic hillock on the southern
bank. The whole vein of Negro quartz had been cut out of three
sides, leaving caves that simulated catacombs. Further west
another excavation in the same kind of rock was probably the
town-quarry. The two lieutenants were directed next morning to
survey this place, and also a second ruin and reef reported to be
found on the left bank, a little below camp.

We have now seen, lying within short distances, three several
quartz-fields, known as--Marwah, "the single Place or Hill of
Mau'" (quartz); Marwat, "the Places of Quartz;" and Aba'l-Maru,
the "Father of Quartz;" not to speak of a Nakb Abu Marwah[EN#83]