artificial. This step leads to a horizontal crest, a broken wall
forming its summit: it is evidently an outlier; and experience
asked, What will be behind it? The more distant plane showed only
the heads of the Shenazir or "Pins," the two quaint columns which
are visible as far as the Sharr itself. This lower block is
bounded, north and south, by gorges; fissures that date from the
birth of the mountain, deepened by age and raging torrents:
apparently they offered no passage. In the former direction yawns
the Rushuh Abu Tinazib, so called from its growth--the
Tanzub-tree[EN#22] (Sodada decidua); and in the latter the Shab
Umm Khargah (Kharjah). I should have preferred a likely looking
Nakb, south of this southern gorge, but the Bedawin, and
especially Abu Khartum, who had fed his camels and sheep upon the
mountain, overruled me.

The ascent of the outlier occupied three very slow hours, spent
mostly in prospecting and collecting. At nine a.m. we stood 3200
feet above sea-level (aner. 26.79), high enough to make our tents
look like bits of white macadam. What most struck us was the
increased importance of the vegetation, both in quantity and
quality; the result, doubtless, of more abundant dew and rain, as
well as of shade from each passing mist-cloud. The view formed a
startling contrast of fertility and barrenness. At every hundred
yards the growths of the plain became more luxuriant in the rich
humus filling the fissures, and, contrary to the general rule,
the plants, especially the sorrel (Rumex) and the dandelion
(Taraxacum), instead of dwindling, gained in stature. The
strong-smelling Ferula looked like a bush, and the Sarh grew into
a tree: the Ar'ar,[EN#23] a homely hawthorn (hawthorn-leaved
Rhus), whose appearance was a surprise, equalled the Cratogus of