of fortresses, dungeons, bulwarks, walls, and towers; of
platforms, buttresses, and flying buttresses. These Giragir
(Jirajir), as the Bedawin call them, change shape at every new
point of view, and the eye never wearies of their infinite
variety. Nor are the tints less remarkable than the forms. When
the light of day warms them with its gorgeous glaze, the
buildings wear the brightest hues of red concrete, like a certain
house near Prince's Gate, set off by lambent lights of lively
pink and balas-ruby, and by shades of deep transparent purple,
while here and there a dwarf dome or a tumulus gleams sparkling
white in the hot sun-ray. The even-glow is indescribably lovely,
and all the lovelier because unlasting: the moment the red disc
disappears, the glorious rosy smile fades away, leaving the pale
grey ghosts of their former selves to gloom against the gloaming
of the eastern sky. I could not persuade M. Lacaze to transfer
this vividity of colour to canvas: he had the artist's normal
excuse, "Who would believe it?"

The next morning saw the Expedition afoot at six a.m., determined
to make up for a half by the whole day's work so long intended.
The track struck eastward, and issued from the dull hollow, Majra
el-Ruways, by a made road about a mile and a half long, a cornice
cut in the stony flanks of a hill whose head projected southwards
into the broad Wady Hujayl ("the Little Partridge"). This line
seems to drain inland; presently it bends round by the east and
feeds the Wady Damah. Rain must lately have fallen, for the earth
is "purfled flowers," pink, white, and yellow. The latter is the
tint prevailing in Midian, often suggesting the careless European
wheat-field, in which "shillock" or wild mustard rears its
gamboge head above the green. Midian wants not only the charming