men to the knee. Beyond it lie dazzling blocks of pure
crystallized salt; and the middle of the pond is open, tenanted
by ducks and waterfowl, and visited by doves and partridges. At
the lower or northern end, a short divide separates it from the
sea; and the waves, during the high westerly gales, run far
inland: it would be easy to open a regular communication between
the harbour and its saltern. The head is formed by the large Wady
Surrah, whose many feeders at times discharge heavy torrents. The
walls of the valley-mouth are marked, somewhat like the Harr,
with caverned and corniced cliffs of white, canary-yellow, and
light-pink sandstone.

They then left to the right the long point Ras el-Ma'llah,
fronting Mardunah Island. Here, as at El-'Akabah and Makna, sweet
water springs from the salt sands of the shore; a freak of
drainage, a kind of "Irish bull" of Nature, so common upon the
dangerous Somali seaboard. The tract leads to the south-east,
never further from the shore than four or five miles, but
separated by rolling ground which hides the main. For the same
reason the travellers were unable to sight the immense
development of granite-embedded quartz, which lurks amongst the
hills to the inland or east, and which here subtends the whole
coast-line. They imagined themselves to be in a purely Secondary
formation of gypsum and conglomerates, cut by a succession of
Wady-beds like the section between El-Muwaylah and 'Aynunah. Thus
they crossed the mouths of the watercourses, whose heads we shall
sight during the inland march, and whose mid-lengths we shall
pass when marching back to El-Wijh.

These exceedingly broad beds are divided, as usual, by long lines