in Bruce's day, and now it is impossible. The mountain is held by
the Beni Harb, a most turbulent tribe, for which see my
"Pilgrimage."[EN#37] Their head Shaykh, Sa'd the Robber, who
still flourished in 1853, is dead; but he has been succeeded by
one of his sons, Shaykh Hudayfah, who is described with simple
force as being a "dog more biting than his sire." Between these
ill-famed haunts of the Beni Harb and Jeddah rises the Jebel
Subh, "a mountain remarkable for its magnitude" (4500 feet),
inhabited by the Beni Subh, a fighting clan of the "Sons of
Battle."

The largest links of these West-Arabian Ghats are of white-grey
granite, veined and striped with quartz; and they are subtended
inland by the porphyritic traps of the Jibal el-Shafah, which we
shall trace to the parallel of El-Hamz, the end of Egypt. I
cannot, however, agree with Wellsted (II. xii.) that the ridges
increase in height as they recede from the sea; nor that the
veins of quartz run horizontally through the "dark granite." The
greater altitudes (three to six thousand feet) are visible from
an offing of forty to seventy miles; and they are connected by
minor heights: some of these, however, are considerable, and here
and there they break into detached pyramids. All are maritime,
now walling the shore, like the Tayyib Ism; then sheering away
from it, where a broad "false coast" has been built by Time.

These western Ghats, then, run down, either in single or in
double line, the whole length of occidental Arabia; and, meeting
a similar and equally important eastern line, they form a mighty
nucleus, the mountains of El-Yemen. After carefully inspecting,
and making close inquiries concerning, a section of some five