salt-and-water. The evening ended happily with the receipt of a
mail, and with the good news that the Sinnar corvette had been
sent to take the place of El-Mukhbir, the unfortunate. Once more
we felt truly grateful to the Viceroy and the Prince who so
promptly and so considerately had supplied all our wants, and
whose kindness would convert our southern cruise into a holiday
gite, without the imminent deadly risk of a burst boiler.

We set out in high spirits on the next morning (6.15 a.m., March
17th), riding, still southwards, up the Surr: the stony, broken
surface now showed that we were fast approaching its source.
Beyond the Umm Khargah gorge on the western bank, rose a tall
head, the Ras el-Rukabiyyah; and beyond it was a ravine, in which
palms and water are said to be found. The opposite side raised
its monotonous curtain of green and red traps, whose several
projections bore the names of Jebel el-Wu'ayrah--the hill behind
our camping-ground--Jebel el-Main, and Jebel Shahitah. A little
beyond the latter debouched the Darb el-Kufl ("Road of
Caravans"), alias Darb el-Asharif ("Road of the Sherifs"), a
winding gap, the old line of the Egyptian pilgrims, by which the
Sulaymayyan Bedawin still wend their way to Suez. The second
name, perhaps, conserves the tradition of long-past wars waged
between the Descendants of the Apostle and the Beni
'Ukbah.[EN#26] The broad mouth was dotted with old graves, with
quartz-capped memorial-cairns, and, here and there, with a block
bearing some tribal mark. The Wady-sole grew a "stinkhorn" held
to be poisonous, and called, from its fetor, "Faswat el-'Aguz"
(Cynophallus impudicus): one specimen was found on the tip of an
ibex-horn, and the other had been impaled with a stick. After two
hours and thirty minutes (= seven miles) we sighted the head of