direction is here west with a little southing, and which still
merits its fame as an Arabian Arcadia. The banks were thickly
bordered with secular tamarisks (T. orientalis), those hardy
warriors with the Hebrew-Arabic name Asl (Athl), that battle
against wind and weather, as successfully at Dovercourt (Essex)
as at Haydarabad (Sind).

The tint was the normal grey-green, not unlike that of the traps
in arriere plan. The clumps sheltered goats, sheep, and camels;
and our mules now revel every day on green meat, growing fatter
and fatter upon the Aristida grass, the Panicum, the Hordeum
murinum, and the Bromus of many varieties. Fronting us rose the
twin granitic peaks of Jebel Mutadan, one with a stepped side
like an unfinished pyramid. They are separated from the Damah by
a rough and stony divide; and ruins with furnaces are reported to
be found in their valley-drain, which feeds the great Wady 'Amud.

We halted, after some sixteen to seventeen miles, at the water
El-Ziyayb, slightly brackish but relished by our animals; and
resumed our way in the cool sea-breeze at one p.m., passing the
Jebel Tulayh on the north bank. The track then left the Damah and
turned up a short broad bed to the north-west. On the right rose
a block of syenite, ruddy with orthose, all rounded lumps and
twisted finials; it discharged a quantity of black sand that
streaked the gravel plain. At four p.m. we camped on a broad
divide, El-Kutayyifah, where an adjacent Sha'b, or "fold,"
supplied fresh rain-water. The march had teen long (seven hours =
twenty-two miles); and Shaykhs and camel-men looked, the Sayyid
said, as if they had "smelt Jehannum."