unlively march of four hours (= eleven miles), on mules worn out
by want of water, we dismounted at a queer isolated lump on the
left of the track. This Jebel el-Murayt'bah ("of the Little
Step") is lumpy grey granite of the coarsest elements, whose
false strata, tilted up till they have become quasi-vertical, and
worn down to pillars and drums, crown the crest like gigantic
columnar crystallizations. We shall see the same freak of nature
far more grandly developed into the "Pins" of the Sharr. It has
evidently upraised the trap, of which large and small blocks are
here and there imbedded in it. The granite is cut in its turn by
long horizontal dykes of the hardest quadrangular basalt,
occasionally pudding'd with banded lumps of red jasper and
oxydulated iron: from afar they look like water-lines, and in
places they form walls, regular as if built. The rounded forms
result from the granites flaking off in curved lamina, like
onion-coats. Want of homogeneity in the texture causes the
granite to degrade into caves and holes: the huge blocks which
have fallen from the upper heights often show unexpected hollows
in the under and lower sides. Above the water we found an immense
natural dolmen, under which apparently the Bedawin take shelter.
After El-Murayt'bah the regular granitic sequence disappears, nor
will it again be visible till we reach Shaghab (March 2nd).

About noon we remounted and rounded the south of the block,
disturbing by vain shots two fine black eagles. I had reckoned
upon the "Water of El-Murayt'bah," in order to make an
exceptional march after so many days of deadly slow going. But
the cry arose that the rain-puddle was dry. We had not brought a
sufficient supply with us, and twenty-two miles to and from the
Wady Dahal was a long way for camels, to say nothing of their