ibex-hunter. His gun, marked "Lazari Coitinaz," was a
long-barrelled Spanish musket, degraded to a matchlock: it had
often changed hands, probably by theft, and the present owner
declared that he had bought it for seventy dollars--nearly L15!
Yet its only luxury was the bottom of a breechloader brass
cartridge, inlaid and flanked by the sharp incisors of the little
Wabar, or mountain coney. These Bedawin make gunpowder for
themselves; they find saltpetre in every cavern, and they buy
from Egypt the sulphur which is found in their own hills.

After a few minutes we left the Harr, which drains the tallest of
the inland hillock-ranges, and the red block "Hamra el-Maysarah;"
and we struck south-east into the Wady Sanawiyyah. It is a vulgar
valley with a novelty, the Tamrat Faraj. This cairn of
brick-coloured boulders buttressing the right bank has, or is
said to have, the Memnonic property of emitting sounds--Yarinn is
the Bedawi word. The boomings and bellowings are said to be
loudest at sunrise and sunset. The "hideous hum" of such
subterraneous thunderings is alluded to by all travellers in the
Dalmatian Island of Melada, and in the Narenta Valley. The marvel
has been accounted for by the escape of imprisoned air unequally
expanded, but "a veil of mystery hangs over the whole."[EN#18]
The valley-sides of dark trap were striped with white veins of
heat-altered argil; the sole with black magnetic sand; and
patches of the bed were buttercup-yellow with the Handan
(dandelion), the Cytisus, and the Zaram (Panicum turgidum) loved
by camels. Their jaundiced hue contrasted vividly with the red
and mauve blossoms of the boragine El-Kahla, the blue flowerets
of the Lavandula (El-Zayti), and the delicate green of the
useless[EN#19] asphodel (El-Borag), which now gave a faint and