growth of thorn-trees--Acacias and Mimosas. High over and beyond
the monarch of the Shafah Mountains, Jebel Sahharah, whose blue
poll shows far out at sea, ran the red levels of the Hisma,
backed at a greater elevation by the black-blue Harrah. The whole
Tihamah range, now so familiar to us, assumed a novel expression.
The staple material proved to be blocks and crests of granite,
protruding from the younger plutonics, which enfolded and
enveloped their bases and backs. The one exception was the dwarf
Umm Jedayl, a heap composed only of grey granite. The Jebel
Kh'shabriyyah in the Dibbagh block attracted every eye; the head
was supported by a neck swathed as with an old-fashioned cravat.

The summit of the outlier is tolerably level, and here the
shepherds had built small hollow piles of dry stone, in which
their newly yeaned lambs are sheltered from the rude blasts. The
view westwards, or towards the sea, which is not seen, almost
justifies by its peculiarity the wild traditions of built wells,
of a "moaning mountain," and of furnaces upon the loftiest
slopes: it is notable that the higher we went, the less we heard
of these features, which at last vanished into thin air. Our
platform is, as I suspected, cut off from the higher plane by a
dividing gorge; but the depth is only three hundred feet, and to
the south it is bridged by a connecting ridge. Beyond it rises
the great mask of granite forming the apex, a bonier skeleton
than any before seen. Down the northern sheet-rocks trickled a
thin stream that caught the sun's eye; thus the ravine is well
supplied with water in two places. South of it rises a tempting
Col, with a slope apparently easy, separating a dull mass of
granite on the right from the peculiar formation to the left. The
latter is a dome of smooth, polished, and slippery grey granite,