The Land of Midian by Richard Francis Burton ~ Full Audiobook
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The Land of Midian, Revisited by Richard F. Burton Preface To the memory of my much-loved niece, Maria Emily Harriet Stistad, who died at Dovercourt, November 12th, 1878. Gold shall be found and found in a land that's not now known. Mother Shipton, A.D. 1448 Preface A few pages by way of forespeech.

the plain unvarnished tale of the travelling midian undertaken by the second expedition which like the first owes all to the liberality and foresight of his highness ismail i khedive of egypt forms the subject of these volumes

During the four months between December 19, 1877 and April 20, 1878, the officers employed covered some 2,500 miles by sea and land, of which 600, not including by-paths, were mapped and planned, and we brought back details of an old new land which the civilised world had clean forgotten. The public will now understand that one and the same subject has not given rise to two books.

I have to acknowledge with gratitude the many able and kindly notices by the press of my first volume, The Gold Mines of Midian, etc., Messrs. C. Keegan, Paul & Co., 1878. But some reviewers succeeded in completely misunderstanding the drift of that avant-courier. It was an introduction intended to serve as a base for the present, more extensive work, and foundations intended to bear weight must be solid."

Its object was to place before the reader the broad outlines of a country whose name was known to every schoolboy, whilst it was a vox et praetaria nihil even to the learned before the spring of 1877. I had judged advisable to sketch, with the able assistance of learned friends, its history and geography, its ethnology and archaeology, its zoology and malacology, its botany and geology,

The drift was to prepare those who take an interest in Arabia generally, and especially in wild, mysterious Midian, for the present work, which, one for so, would be a tale of discovery and adventure. Thus, readers of the land of Midian, revisited, may feel that they are not standing upon ground utterly unknown, and the second publication is shortened and lightened, perhaps the greatest advantage of all, by the prolegomena having been presented in the first.

The purpose of the last expedition was to conclude the labours begun during the spring of 1877 in a mining country unknown, or rather, fallen into oblivion. Hence, its primary objective was mineralogical. The 25 tonnes of specimens brought back to Cairo were inspected by good judges from South Africa, Australia and California, and all recognised familiar metalliferous rocks.

the collection enabled me to distribute the mining industry into two great branches one the rich silicates and carbonates of copper smelted by the ancients in north midian and two the auriferous veins worked but not worked out by comparatively modern races in south midian the region lying below the parallel of el

It is indeed still my conviction that tailings have been washed for gold even by men still living. We also brought notices and specimens of three several deposits of sulphur, of a turquoise mine behind Ziba, of salt and saltpeter, and of vast deposits of gypsum. These are sources of wealth which the 19th century is not likely to leave wasted and unworked.

In geography, the principal novelties are the identification of certain ruined cities mentioned by Ptolemy and the harars, or platonic centres, scattered over the seaboard and the interior. I venture to solicit the attention of experts for my notes on a harar, the great volcanic chain whose fair proportions have been so much mutilated by its only explorer, the late Dr. Wallin.

Beginning with Damascus Trachonitis and situated in the parallel of north latitude 28 degrees about 60 direct miles east of the Red Sea, it is reported to subtend the whole coast of northwestern Arabia between Al Mawaila north latitude 27 degrees 39 minutes and Al Jambu north latitude 24 degrees 5 minutes.

Equally noticeable are the items of information concerning the Wadi Hams, the Land's End of Egypt, and the most important feature of its kind in northwestern Arabia. Its name, wrongly given by Wallin, is unknown to the hydrographic chart and to the erudite pages of my friend Professor Alois Springer, who, however, suspects with me that it may be the mouth of the celebrated Wadi al-Qura.

For further topographical details, the reader is referred to the itineraries of the expedition offered to the Royal Geographical Society of London. Some of the principal sites were astronomically determined by Commanders Ahmed Moussalam and Nasser Ahmed of the Egyptian Navy. The task of mapping and planning was committed to the two young staff lieutenants sent for that purpose. They worked well in the field and their sketches were carefully executed whilst under my superintendence, but it was different when they returned to Cairo.

the maps sent to their little exposition at the hippodrome see conclusion were simply a disgrace to the staff bureau my departure from egypt caused delay and when the chart reached me it was far from satisfactory

Names had been omitted, and without my presence it could not have been printed. With the able assistance of Mr. William J. Turner of the Royal Geographical Society, who found the work harder than expected, it has been reduced to tolerable shape. Still, it is purely provisional, and, when mining operations shall begin, a far more careful survey will be required."

As regards archaeology, the second expedition visited described and surveyed 18 ruins of cities and towns, some of considerable extent in North Midian, besides seeing or hearing of some 20 large mashral, apparently the ateliers of vagrant gypsy-like gangs. This total of 38 is not far short of the 40 traditional Midianite settlements preserved by the medieval Arab geographers.

Many others are reported to exist in the central or inland region, and 15 were added by the South Country, including the classical temple or shrine found upon the bank of the Wadi Hams before mentioned. The most interesting sites were recommended to Monsieur Lacaze, whose portfolio was soon filled with about 200 illustrations in oil and watercolours, pencil croquis and sun pictures. All, except the six coloured illustrations which adorn this volume, have been left in Egypt.

his highness resolved to embody the results of our joint labours in a large album illustrated with coloured lithographs maps and plans explained by letter-press and prepared at the citadel cairo the meteorological journal was kept by myself assisted at times by mr clark mr david de guide engineer of the mohbir whose gallant conduct will be recorded chapter eight and commander nasir ahmed of the senna

obliged me by registering simultaneous observations at sea level. The hull was reduced to shape by Mr. W.J. Turner of the Royal Geographical Society. My private collection of mineralogical specimens was deposited with Professor M.H.N. Storey-Maskelyne. The spirit specimens of zoology filled three large canisters, and the British Museum also received a hare and five birds, Mr. R.B. Sharp, four bats, rhinopoma, and a mouse.

six reptiles, five fishes, 35 crustaceans and about the same number of insects, five scorpions, six leeches, 60 mollusks, four echinoderms and three sponges.

Dr. A. Gunther, Appendix 3, determined and named two new species of reptiles. Mr. Frederick Smith, Appendix 3, took charge of the insects. Mr. Edward J. Mears, FLS, etc., described the small collection of crustacea, annals, and magazines of natural history for November 1878.

finally edgar a smith examined and named the shells collected on the shores of the acaba gulf and the northeastern recess of the red sea the main interest of the little hortus siccus was the alpine flora gathered at an altitude of five thousand feet above sea level

The plants were offered to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker of Kew, and Professor D. Oliver of the Herbarium has kindly furnished me with a list of the names. Appendix 4. Mr. William Carruthers and his staff also examined the spirit specimens of fleshy plants. Appendix 4. Mr. Reginald Stuart Poole, keeper of coins and medals, and Mr. Barclay V. Head were good enough to compare with their rich collections the coins of ancient Midian found, chapter 3, for the first time at Machair Shweb.

Some years ago, Mr. Robert Reddy of the British Museum had bought from a Jew, Yusuf Khalafat, a miscellaneous collection which included about 60 of the so-called Medianitic coins. But the place of discovery is wholly unknown. The assistant keeper read a paper on Arabian imitations of Athenian coins, Medianitic, Hedonistic,

Hemioritic and others at a meeting of the New Missimatic Society November 21st 1878 and I did the same at the Royal Asiatic Society December 16 1878

The little find of stone implements rued and worked, and the instruments illustrating the mining industry of the country appeared before the Anthropological Section of the British Association which met at Dublin, August 1878, and again before the Anthropological Institute of London, December 10th, 1878.

Finally, the skulls and fragments of skulls from Midian were submitted to Professor Richard Owen, the Superintendent of Natural History, and my learned friend kindly inspected the Egyptian and Palmerian crania which accompanied them.

The hole was carefully described by Dr C. Carter Blake, Ph.D., before the last-named séance of the Anthropological Institute, December 10, 1878. The tons of specimens brought to Cairo were, I have said, publicly exhibited there and created much interest. But the discovery of a mining country, some 300 miles long, once immensely wealthy and ready to become wealthy once more, is not likely to be accepted by everyone.

Jealous and obstructive officials did not think much of it. Rivals opposed it with even less ceremony. A mild ring in Egypt attempted in vain to run the Hammamat and Darfur mines, chapter 3, against Midian. Consequently, the local press was dosed with rumours which, retailed by the home papers, made the latter rife in contradictory reports.

To quote one case only, the turquoise gang from Zeber, chapter 12, was pronounced by the inexpert mineralogists of the citadel Cairo who attempted criticism to be carbonate of copper because rich silicates of that metal were shown at the exposition. No one seemed to know that the fine turquoise of Midian had been sold for years at sewers and even at Cairo. There was indeed much to criticise in the collection which had been made with a marvellous carelessness."

but we must not be hard upon monsieur marie he is an engineer utterly ignorant of mineralogy and of assaying he was told off to do the duty and he did it well as he could in other words very badly he neglected to search for alluvial gold in the sands every wady which cuts at right angles the metalliferous maritime chains should have been carefully prospected these sandy and quartzose beds are natural conduits and sluice boxes

but the search for tailings is completely different from that of gold veins and requires a special practice. The process, indeed, may be called purely empirical. It is not taught in German street, nor by the École des Mines. In this matter, theory must bow to rule of thumb. The caprices of alluvium are various and curious enough to baffle every attempt at scientific induction. The

Thus, the habits of the metal, so to speak, must be studied by experiment with patient labour. The most accomplished mineralogist may pass over rich alluvium without recognising its presence, where the rude prospector of California and Australia will find an abundance of stream gold. Evidently, the proportion of tailings must carefully be laid down before companies are justified in undertaking the expensive operation of quartz crushing.

Hence, Monsieur Thibaus Morisot, a practical digger from South Africa, introduced at Cairo by his compatriot Monsieur Marie to my friend Monsieur Jacob Atinbé, found a fair opportunity of proposing to his highness, Le Gris, October 1878, a third expedition in search of sand gold. The Viceroy, however, true to his undertaking, refused to sanction any interloping.

the highly distinguished monsieur ferdinand de lesseps when en route to paris kindly took charge of some case of specimens for analysis but the poorest stuff had been supplied to him by monsieur marie and the results of which i never heard were probably nil

The samples brought to England by order of His Highness the Khareev were carefully assayed. The largest collection was submitted to Dr John Percy, FRS. Smaller items were sent to well-known houses, Messrs Johnston and Mathey of Hatton Garden and Messrs Edgar Jackson and Co., associates of the Royal School of Mines. 14 samples. Finally, special observations were made by Mr John L. Jenkin of Carrington.

through Mr. J. H. Murchison of British Lead Mines, etc., etc., etc., by Lieutenant Colonel Ross, the distinguished author of Pyrology, and by Lieutenant Colonel Bolton, who kindly compared the rocks with those in his cabinet. Monsieur Gastineau Bay's analysis of the specimens, brought home by the first expedition, will be found at the end of Chapter 8.

The following is the text of Dr Percy's report, Metallurgical Laboratory, Royal School of Mines, German Street, London, December 13th, 1878. Dear Sir, I now send the results of the analytical examination of the specimens which you submitted to me for that purpose.

the examination has been conducted with the greatest care in the metallurgical laboratory of the royal school of mines by mr richard smith who for the last thirty years has been constantly engaged in such work and in whose accuracy i have absolute confidence

it is impossible that anyone should have taken greater interest or have devoted himself with greater earnestness to the investigation i have almost entirely confined myself to a statement of facts as i understand that was all you required for the guidance of his highness the khedive abstract examination of the mineral specimens contained in the boxes marked as under

an average representative sample of each specimen of about six pounds in weight was prepared for examination from portions broken off or otherwise taken by mr richard smith at the victoria docks number one box twenty two quartz from mugna or mackna quartz coloured black and red-brown with oxides of iron these were of two varieties marked twenty two a and twenty two b respectively

2. The magnetic ironstone 22A was examined and found to contain of the following percentages are rounded to the nearest percentile for brevity. 85% peroxide of iron, 10% protoxide of iron, 3% silica. The oxide of iron together contain of metallic iron 67%.

number three the mucous iron stone twenty two b was examined and found to contain of ninety one per cent peroxide of iron six per cent silica the peroxide of iron contains of metallic iron sixty four percent number four box number fourteen quartz from magna gave no results

Number 5, box number 27, iron, from Magna, proved to be hematite, which is magnetic, with some red-brown oxide of iron and quartz. It was found to contain of 75% peroxide of iron, 5% protoxide of iron. The oxide of iron together contained of metallic iron, 56%. Number 6, box number 7, conglomerate, from Magna, yielded no results,

7. Box number 25, quartz from Magna. This quartz, veined and coloured black and red-brown with oxides of iron, was assayed with the following results. Gold and silver, none. 8 and 9. Boxes numbers 50 and 37, quartz and red dust from Magna, yielded no results.

10. Box number 37A, Sulphur from Magna. Lumps of sulphur, crystallised and massive, irregularly distributed through a white, dull, porous rock. The latter was examined and found to be hydrated sulphate of lime or gypsum with a small quantity of magnesia. Some of the lumps of rock were coloured with oxides of iron and others intermixed with sand. 11 and 12. Boxes number 3 and 6.

black quartz and white quartz from the Jebel al-Abyaz gave no results except a small portion of copper pyrites in a lump of quartz box number six number thirteen box number forty seven quartz from al-wajj or widge gave only oxide of iron number fourteen box number five red quartz from al-wajj a quartz with red-brown oxide of iron and earthy substances was assayed with the following results gold per statue ton equals three thousand two hundred forty pounds

two pennyweights fifteen grains silver traces number fifteen box number sixteen mica schist from elwidge this mica schist undergoing decomposition from weathering action mixed with small lumps of quartz was acid with the following results gold prostitute ton six grains silver traces

Number 16, box number 32, white quartz from Elwich. This quartz was coloured with red-brown oxide of iron mixed with mica schist, was assayed with the following results. Gold per statute tonne, three penny weights, 22 grains, silver traces. Number 17, box number 48, red sulphur from Sham Yahar, was found to have the following composition while it was free from native sulphur. 44% peroxide of iron,

15% sand, clay, carbonates and sulphates of lime and magnesia 30% salts soluble in water, chiefly alkaline chlorides and chlorites and sulphates of lime and magnesia 11% water Total 100 Number 18 Box number 48A Gypsum from Sham Yaha Partly semi-transparent and granular and partly dull white and opaque it was found to be hydrated sulphate of lime or gypsum with carbonate of lime and some sand, magnesia and chloride of sodium

number nineteen box number thirty five dust and stones from shama yielded no results section two examination of the mineral specimens contained in a box sent from egypt as the specimens were unlabelled they were marked abcdef gh i respectively

Number 21. A. Copper ore. A fair average specimen was prepared for examination from several lumps of ore and marked A. It was submitted to analysis and found to contain carbonates of lime and magnesia, silica, alumina and oxides of iron and of 6% copper metallic. B.

a portion of the copper mineral from which the rock or vein stuff had been detached as far as practicable was found to consist of impure hydrated silicate of copper bluish-green chrysocolla and carbonate of copper it was acid and found to contain of twenty three per cent copper metallic

Number 22b, a lump of soft ochre-red-brown ironstone coated with a thin layer of greyish-white substance. A fair average sample, inclusive of this external layer, was prepared for examination and was found to consist of 81% peroxide of iron, 12% water, 3% silica, 4% sulfuric acid, lime, magnesia, alumina, total 100. The peroxide of iron contains 57% of metallic iron.

The greyish-white substance was found to consist of silica, alumina, sulphate of lime and a little oxide of iron and magnesia. Number 23, C. Lump of red ironstone associated with sand and earthy substances containing 68% peroxide of iron, 2% water of iron, 18% silica and sand, 12% lime, magnesia in small quantity, alumina, carbonic acid, sulphuric acid, traces. Total 100. The peroxide of iron contains 48% of metallic iron.

Number 24, D. Lump of white quartz said to contain visible gold. I did not observe any, but found a few minute specks of pyrites and partially resembling mica. Number 25, lump of quartz associated with red-brown oxide of iron. It yielded no results. Number 26, lump of rock in which the turquoise occurs. There was a thin layer of greenish-blue turquoise mineral on one surface and minute seams of a similar substance throughout the specimen.

a. The layer of turquoise mineral from which the rock or vein stuff had been detached as far as practicable was found to contain phosphoric acid, alumina, oxide of copper, oxide of iron and water, which occur in turquoise. b. After the layer had been separated, a fair average sample of the rock was found to contain 1.69% of metallic copper. It was also acid and found to be free of silver and gold.

Number 27 G a variety of jasper having a somewhat polished and irregular and deeply indented surface the result of sand action the fractured surface was red with patches of yellow it was found to consist chiefly of silica coloured with oxides of iron Number 28 H lump of sard of a pale red flesh colour a variety of chalcedony it was found to consist almost entirely of silica

Number 29i. Lumps of pure ironstone. A small lump of metal, supposed to contain antimony and platinum, was brought for examination by Captain R.F. Burton. It was submitted to analysis and found to be iron and combined carbon of white cast iron, containing small quantities of lead, copper and silver, and free from antimony, platinum and gold. It is evidently the product of a fusion operation. A few shots of lead were attached to the surface of the metal. Dr. Percy concludes the assays in these words...

Three of the specimens, numbers 14, 15 and 19, from the certain locality contained gold. The amount of gold, however, is small. I consider these indications of the presence of the precious metal not altogether unsatisfactory, and certainly to justify further exploration. My conviction is that the ancients were adept in the art of extracting gold, and that, owing to the small value of human labour, they could get out as much of the metal as could now be done. They knew perfectly what was worth taking and what was not, and

and i think it likely that what you have brought home had been rejected by the ancients as unworkable further search may lead to the discovery of workable stuff but would doubtless require a good deal of time unless lucky accident should intervene the specimens numbers two three five twenty two and twenty three

contain sufficient iron to render them available as iron ores provided they occur in large quantity the copper present in number twenty one a is too small in amount to render it available as a source of that metal

footnote analyses of copper ore from midian at the citadel cairo gave in certain cases forty per cent if it is practicable on a large scale by hand labour or other means to separate the copper mineral as in b it would be sufficiently rich in copper provided the costs of the transit were not too great

The specimen number 17 is only of scientific interest as it gives off an acid vapour when heated, and this substance may have been used by the ancients in the separation of silver from gold by the process termed cementition. I remain, dear sir, yours very truly, signed, John Percy, M.D., F.R.S., lecturer on metallurgy at the Royal School of Mines, London, Captain R.F. Burton, etc.,

Upon this able report I would offer the following observations. We who have travelled through a country like Midian find everywhere extensive works from metallurgy, barrages and aqueducts, cisterns and tanks, furnaces, fire bricks and scoria, open mines and huge scatters of spalled quartz with the remains of some eighteen cities and towns which apparently fell to ruin with the industry that founded and fed them.

we i say cannot but form a different and far higher idea of its mineral capabilities than those who determine them by a simple inspection of a few specimens the learned dr percy at once hits the mark when he surmises that worthless samples were brought home and this would necessarily occur when no metallurgist no practical prospector was present with the expedition as will appear from the following pages all the specimens were collected assile ouvert and wholly without judgment

I therefore expect that future exploration will develop midian as it has done India. The quartz-sourced outcrop called the Winad Reef, Madras Presidency, produced only a few poorer pennyweights per tonne, two and seven being the extremes, while much of it was practically unproductive. Presently, in February 1878, the district was visited by Sir Andrew Clarke of Australian Experience, member of the Vice-Regional Council.

he invited mr brough smith of victoria to explore and test the capabilities of the country and that eminent practical engineer discovered in an area of twenty five by thirteen miles ninety outcrops some yielding they say two hundred of ounces per ton of gold fine and coarse with jagged pieces as large as peas and british india now hopes to draw her gold coinage from winad

I conclude this abstract of the book, which would have been reduced in size had the mass of matter permitted, with a heartfelt hope that the grand old land of Midian will not be without the attraction to the public of Europe. Richard F. Burton, Athenaeum Club, December 16. End of section one. Save on Cox Internet when you add Cox Mobile and get fibre-powered internet at home and unbeatable 5G reliability on the go.

So whether you're playing a game at home or attending one live, you can do more without spending more. Learn how to save at Cox.com slash internet. Cox internet is connected to the premises via coaxial cable. Cox mobile runs on the network with unbeatable 5g reliability as measured by UCLA LLC in the U S two H 2023 results may vary, not an endorsement of the restrictions apply. Save on Cox internet. When you add Cox mobile and get fiber powered internet at home and unbeatable 5g reliability on the go.

So whether you're playing a game at home or attending one live, you can do more without spending more. Learn how to save at cox.com slash internet. Cox Internet is connected to the premises via coaxial cable. Cox Mobile runs on the network with unbeatable 5G reliability as measured by UCLA LLC in the US to age 2023. Results may vary, not an endorsement of the restrictions apply. Chapter 1 of The Land of Midian, revisited by Richard F. Burton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Part 1. The March through Majen Proper, North Midian. Chapter 1. Preliminary. From Trieste to Midian.

throughout the summer of eighteen seventy seven i was haunted by memories of mysterious midian the golden region appeared to me in the glow of primeval prosperity described by the egyptian hieroglyphs as rich in agriculture and in fertility according to the old hellenic travellers as in its centres of civilisation and in the precious metals catalogued by the sacred books of the hebrews

again i saw the mining works of the greek the roman and the nabathean whose names are preserved by ptolemy the forty cities mere ghosts and shadows of their former selves described in the pages of the mediaeval arab geographers and the ruthless ruin which under the dominion of the bedouin gradually crept over the land of jethro

the tale of a rise and fall forcibly suggested algeria that province so opulent and splendid under the masters of the world converted into a fiery wilderness by the representatives of the gentle and gallant turk and brought to life once more by french energy and industry and such was my vision of a future midian whose rich stores of various minerals will restore her to wealth and health when the two chrivial expeditions shall have shown the world what she has been and what she may be again

i was invited to resume my exploration during the winter of eighteen seventy seven seventy eight by the viceroy of egypt ismail i a prince whose superior intelligence is ever anxious to develop the resources of his country his highness was perhaps the only man in his own dominions who believing in the buried wealth of midian had the perspicacity to note the advantages offered by its exploitation for the world around the viceroy pronounced itself decidedly against the project

my venerable friend linant pasha suggested a comparison with the abandoned diggings of the upper nile forgetting that in at least half of all midian only the tailings have been washed whereas in the bishari country and throughout the atbay between the meridians of berenik and sawakin the very thinnest metallic

fibrils have been shafted and tunnelled to their end in the rock by those marvellous labourers, the old Egyptians. In the Hammamat country, again, the excessive distances, both from the Nile and from the Red Sea, together with the cost of transport, must bar all profit. Even worse are the conditions of Faizoglu and Darfur, whilst the mines of Midian begin literally at the shore.

Another pasha wrote to me from Alexandria, congratulating me upon having discovered during our first expedition a little copper and iron. Generally, the official public, knowing that I had brought back stones, not solid masses of gold and silver, loudly deplored the prospective waste of money, and money, after the horse plague, the low Nile, and the excessive exigencies of the short-sighted creditor, was exceptionally scarce."

The truly oriental view of the question was taken by an official whom I shall call Arif Persher, the Knowing One.

When told that Monsieur Georges Marie, the government engineer detailed to accompany the first expedition, had sent in official analyses with sample tubes of gold and silver, thus establishing the presence of auriferous and argentiferous rocks on the Arabian shore, son excellence exclaimed, « Imprudent, Jean, homme, thus to throw away the chances of life !

Had he only declared the whole affair a farce, a flam, a sell, a canard, the Viceroy would have held him to be honest and would have taken care of his future.

"'Still, through bad report, Lecrive, who had mastered with his usual accuracy of perception and judgment the subject of Midian and her mines, was staunch to his resolve, and when one of his European financiers, a contrôleur général des dépenses, the normal round peg in the square hole, warned him that there were no public funds for such purposes, His Highness warmly declared, on dit, that the costs of the expedition should be defrayed at his own expense.'

meanwhile i had passed the summer of eighteen seventy seven in preparation for the work of the ensuing winter a long correspondence with many learned friends and a sedulous study of the latest geographers especially german taught me all that was known of mining in arabia generally and particularly in midian

during my six months absence from egypt my vision was fixed steadily upon one point the expedition that was to come and when his highness was pleased to offer me in an autograph letter full of the kindest expressions the government of darfur i deferred accepting the honour till midian had been disposed of

Unhappily, certain kindly advisers persuaded me to make well better by a visit to Carlsbad and a course of its alkaline fountains of health. Never was there a greater mistake. The air is bad as the water is good, the climate is reeking damp like that of Western Africa, and, as in St. Petersburg, a plaid must be carried during the finest weather. Its effects, rheumatic and neuralgic, may be judged by

by the fact that doctors must walk about with pocketed squirts for the hypodermal injection of opium almost all those whom i knew there wanting to be better went away worse and in my own case a whole month of midian sun and a sharp attack of ague and fever were required to burn out the accentuous and to counteract the deleterious effect of the hygean springs

At last the happy hour for departure struck, and October 19th, 1877, the Austro-Hungarian espero Capitano Colombo steamed out of Trieste. On board were Saffer Pasha, our host of Castle Bertelstein, and my learned friends, the Orlick counsellor Alfred von Krima, Austrian commissioner to Egypt, and Dr Heinrich Bruchsch Bay, the latter gave me a tough piece of work in the shape of his "Egypten", which will presently be quoted in these pages.

It would be vain to repeat a description of the little voyage described in The Goldmines of Midian. The Dalmatian, or first day, the second, or day of Corfu loved and lost, and the third, made memorable by Cephalonia and the glorious canal. All give fine, smooth weather, but the usual rolling began off still vexed Kip Matapan. It lasted through the fourth day, or of Candia, this insula nobilis et amarna,

crete the crown of all the isles flower of levantine waters while the fifth or mediterranean alexandrian day killed two of the seventeen fine horses yuccas and anglo-normans which sefer pasha was conveying to cairo

On Thursday morning, October 25th, after rolling through the night off the old port Eustace, which looks brand new, we landed, and the next day saw me at Cairo. Such was my haste that I could pay only a flying visit to the broken beer bottles, the burst provisioned tins, the ice plants, and hospitable society of Ramle the Sandheap, and my many acquaintances had barely time to offer their congratulations upon the prospects of my becoming an Egyptian.

my presence at the capital was evidently necessary a manner of association for utilizing the discovery of the first expedition had been formed in london by the monsieur vignolles who knew only the scattered and unofficial notices issued without my privity by english and continental journals

Their representative, General Nuthall, formerly of the Madras Army, had twice visited Cairo in August and October 1877, seeking a concession of the mines and offering conditions which were perfectly unacceptable. The Viceroy was to allow, contrary to convention, the free importation of all machinery to supply guards who were not wanted and, in fact, to guarantee the safety of the workmen who were perfectly safe.

in return ten per cent on net profits fifteen being the royalty of the suez canal was the magnificent inducement offered to the viceregal convertes i could not help noting by no means silently the noble illustration of the principle embodied in sic vornon vobis i was to share in the common fate of originators discoverers and inventors the find was mine the profits were to go elsewhere

General Nuttall professed inability to regard the matter in that light, while to all others it appeared no other. However, after a few friendly meetings, the representative left Egypt with the understanding that possibly we might work together when the exploration should have been completed. His Highness, who had verbally promised me either the concession or four percent on gross produce, acted en prise, simply remarking that the affair was in my hand and that he would not interfere with me.

i must not trouble the reader with the tedious tale of the pains and the labour which accompany their accouchement of such an expedition all practicals know that to organise a movement of sixty men is not less troublesome indeed rather more so than if it numbered six hundred or six thousand

The Viceroy had wisely determined that we should not only carry out the work of discovery by tracing the precious metals to their source, but also that we should bring back specimens weighing tons enough for assay and analysis, quantitative and qualitative, in London and Paris. Consequently, miners and mining apparatus were wanted, with all the materials for quarrying and blasting. My spirits sighed for dynamite, but experiments at Trieste had shown it to be too dangerous.

The party was to consist of an escorting number 25 Sudan soldiers of the line, Negroes liberated some two years ago, a few Madangia, mine men, and 30 Hagara, stone men or quarry men. The government magazines of Cairo contain everything, but the difficulty is to find where the dispersed articles are stored. There is a something of red tapism, but all this plain sailing compared with what it would be in Europe.

"'The express order of His Highness Hossein Khamil Pasha, "'Minister of Finance and Acting Minister of War, "'at once threw open every door. "'Had this young prince not taken in the affair "'a personal interest of the liveliest and most intelligent nature, "'we might have spent the winter at Cairo. "'And here I cannot refrain from mentioning, amongst other names, "'that of Mr. Alfred E. Garwood, C.E., Locomotive Superintendent, "'who, in the short space of four months, "'has introduced order and efficiency into the chaos "'known as the Bullock Magazines.'

with his friendly cooperation and under his vigorous arm difficulties melted away like a hill in a tropical sun general stone pasha the chief of staff also rendered me some assistance by lending the instruments which stood in his own cabinet de

Poor Cairo had spent a seedy autumn. The Russo-Turkish campaign, which had been unjustifiably allowed by foreign powers to drain Egypt of her gold and lifeblood, some 25,000 men since the beginning of the Servian prelude, not only caused abundant sorrow to the capital, but also frightened off the stranger host, which habitually supplies the poorer population with sovereigns and Napoleons.

the horse-pest abad typhus after raging in eighteen seventy six and early in eighteen seventy seven had died out unfortunately so had the horses and the well-bred fine-tempered and high-spirited little egyptians were replaced by a mongrel lot hastily congregated from every breeding-ground in europe

the falaz who had expected great things from the mission of m m goshen and joubert asked wonderingly if those financiers had died while a scanty nile ten to twelve feet lower they say than any known during the last thousand years added to the troubles of the poor by throwing some six hundred thousand fedans or acres out of gear and by compelling an exodus from the droughty right to the left bank finally when the river of egypt did rise it rose too late and brought with it a feverish and unwholesome autumn

briefly we hardly escaped the horrors of europe herbsttarschung trist sporen in den waldern auf den fluren regentage bosses werter etc meanwhile in the land of the pharaohs whose scanty interest about the war was disguised by affected rejoicing at ottoman successors the prophet gallantly took the field as in the days of yusuf bin ishak

this time the vehicle of revelation was the learned sheikh alaysh who was ordered in a dream by the apostle of allah upon whom be peace to announce the victory of the moslem over the infidel and as the vision took place in jemad el achir or june the first prediction was not more unsuccessful than usual

shortly afterwards the same reverend man again dreamt that seeing two individuals violently quarrelling with voies de fay he had hastened like a true believer to separate and to reconcile them but what was his surprise when the brawlers proved to be the sultan and the tzar the former administering condign personal punishments to his hereditary foe this the enlightened sheikh determined was a sign that in september the osmanli would be gloriously triumphant not was he far wrong

the russians who had begun the campaign like the english in india with a happy contempt both for the enemy and for the elementary rules of war were struck with a cold fit of caution instead of marching straight upon and entrenching themselves in adrianople they vainly broke their gallant heads against the improvised earthworks of plevna and ignorant europe marvelling at the prowess of the noble turk

ignored the fact that all the best Turkish soldiers were Slavs, originally Christians, renegades of old, unable to speak a word of Turkish, preserving their Bosniak family names and without one drop of Turkish blood in their veins. Suleyman Pasha army was about as Turkish as are the Poles or the Hungarians. Nonetheless, did Cairo develop the normal seasoned humours of the Frank? Among the various ways of doing the pyramids, I registered a new one,

"'Mr. A. Jr., unwilling wholly to neglect them, "'sent his valet with a special order "'to stand upon the topmost plateau.'

the second water of irrigation made november dangerous many of the shepherds suffered from ayanel muluk the evil of kings or gout in the gloomy form as well as the gay and whiskycum soda became popular as upon the banks of the thames and the tweed as happens on dark days the money-digger was abroad and one anecdote deserves record many years ago an old widow body had been dunned into buying for a few piastres a ragged little manuscript from a pauper

These West Africans are, par excellence, the magicians of modern Egypt and Syria, and here they find treasure like the Greeks upon the shores of the northern Adriatic. Perhaps there may be a basis for the idea.

Oral traditions and written documents concerning buried hordes would take refuge in remote regions, comparatively undisturbed by the storms of war and inhabited by races more or less literary. At any rate, the Maghrabi Dawesh went his ways assuring the customer that, when her son came of age, a fortune would be found in the little book. And true enough, the boy reaching Man's estate read in its torn pages ample details concerning a Dafnia, or horde, of great value.

he was directed by the manuscript to a certain spot upon the mokattam range immediately behind the cairene citadel where the removal of a few stones would disclose a choked shaft the latter would descend to a tunnel full of rubbish and one of the many sidings would open upon the golden chamber

the permission of government was secured the workman began and the direction proved true barring the treasure towards which progress was still being made such was the legend of cairo as recounted to me by my good friend yakub artin bey i can only add to it allah is all-knowing the sole cause of delay in beginning the exploration was the want of money and this of course even the prince minister of finance could not coin

egypt the fertile the wealthy the progressive was indeed at the time all but insolvent at the suggestion of foreigners profitable investments which yielded literally nothing had been freely made for many a year and the sole results were money difficulties and debt

The European finances had managed admirably for their shareholders, but, having assumed the annual national income at a maximum instead of a minimum, they had brought the goose of the golden eggs to the very verge of death. The actionnaires were to receive, with a punctuality hardly possible in the East, the USurious interest of 6%, not including 1% for a sinking fund. Meanwhile, the officers and officials, military, naval and civil, had been in arrears of salary for 7 to 15 months, and even the Jews refused to cash at any price their pay certificates.

nothing could be more unwise or unjust than the exactions of the creditors men must live if not paid they perforce pay themselves and thus of every hundred piastres hardly thirty find their way into the treasury ten times worse was the condition of the miserable fellaheen who were selling for three or four napoleons the bullock worth fifteen per head thus they were tied over the present year but a worse than indian famine was threatened for the following

and the bakal at once petty trader and money-lender whose interest and compound interest here amount as in bombay to hundreds of per cent would complete the ruin which the lunaile and the christian creditor had begun a temporary reduction of interest to three per cent with one per cent of amortization should content the greedy shareholder who seeks to combine high profits with perfect security

During November 1877 there were five MPs at Sheppard's and all cried shame upon the financial condition of the country. Sir George Campbell opened the little game. In his Inside View of Egypt, Fault in the Review, December 1877, he drew a graphic picture of the abnormal state of poor Egypt. He expressed the sensible opinion that, in the settlement, the claims of the bondholders have been too exclusively considered, and he concluded that no more payments of debt interest should be made until official arrears are discharged.

at last the phare d'alexandrie november twenty ninth eighteen seventy seven doubtless under official inspiration put forth the following article greatly to the satisfaction of the unfortunate employe if our particular information is exact the committee of finances has just made an excellent decision it consists in that we immediately prepare the money for the payment of the next coupon the ministry and everything else

Procedura au paiement des amendements arriérés des employés. Nous apprenons en outre que SA, le ministre de la Finance, même a déclaré mal au proprio que jusqu'au complet paiement des arriérés dû aux employés et dans le cas où il se présenterait une dépense de grande importance

even provided by the budget, to not give the payment without the prior consent of the committee.

We applaud all our efforts for this good news first because it affirms once again the scrupulous accuracy that we bring to the payment of coupons. Then it proves the strong interest conspired by the government the situation of its many employees. Finally, it makes us hope that after having changed to them, we will also take care of paying the other sums carried and planned in the budget of the year.

accordingly on december the second the prince minister of finance took heart of grace and distributed among the officials one month's pay with a promise that all arrears should be presently made good on the same day his highness issued to the expedition two thousand napoleons in addition to the six hundred and twenty already expended upon instruments and provisions this was the more liberal as i had calculated the total at one thousand five hundred the more however the better

in such work it is money versus time the former saving the latter and we were already late in the year it had been proposed to start on november fifteenth and we had lost three precious weeks of fine autumnal weather the stores were equally abundant i wanted one forge and received three

of course many details had been forgotten e g a farrier and change of mule irons a tinsmith and tinning tools a sulphur still boots for the soldiers and the quarrymen small shot for specimens and so forth

i had carried out my idea of a dragoman with two servants and the result had been a model failure especially in the most important department the true desert cook is a man sui generi he would utterly fail at the criterion and even at shepherds but in the wilderness he will serve coffee within fifteen minutes and dish the best of dinners within the hour after the halt

mr clark and lieutenant ameer worked with a will and they were ably seconded by colonel ali b roby and lieutenant-colonel of the staff mohammed b baligh but the finishing touch to such preparations must be done by the master-hand and my unhappy visit to carlsbad rendered that impossible

The stores and provisions were supplied by Monsieur's Volterra brothers of Cairo. I cannot say too much in their praise, and the packing was as good as the material Monsieur Gros of Shepherds was good enough to let me have a barrel of claret, which improved every week by travelling, and which cost only a franc a bottle. It began as a bon ordinaire, and the little that returned to Cairo ranked with a quasi-grand vin, at least as good as the four-shilling medocq.

Finally, Dr. Lowe of Cairo kindly prepared for us a medicine chest containing about ten pounds' worth of the usual drugs and appliances, calomel, tartar emetic, and laudanum, blister, plaster, and simple ointment.

A special train was made ready for Thursday, December 6th, and at 10am, after taking leave of their Highnesses, who courteously wished me good luck and Godspeed, the expedition found itself underway. We were accompanied to the station by many kind friends, my excellent kinsmen Lord Francis and Lady F. Cunningham, Jakub Artinbey, General Stone, and Messieurs Georges, Howard, Giraud, and Guillemin.

The change from the damp air of Cairo to the drought of the desert was magical. Light ailments and heavy cares seemed to fall off like rags and tatters. We halted at Zagazig, remarking that this young focus of railway traffic had become the eastern key of Lower Egypt as Benhar is to the western delta and prophesying that someday, not far distant, we'll see the glories of Bobastis revived.

here we picked up my old french hadjiwali whom age he declares that he was born in the month mizan of seventeen ninety seven had made only a little fatter and greedier we gave a wide berth to the future alexandria ismailia whose splendid climate had been temporarily spoilt by the sweet-water canal of the same name the soil became literally sopped and hence the intermittent fevers which have lately assailed it

A similar disregard for drainage has ingeniously managed to convert into pest houses similar and other Himalayan sanitaria. The day ended with running the train into the sewer's docks so as to embark all our impediments on the next morning, and I fondly expected Saturday to see us sail, but the weather-wise had been true in their forecast. Friday opened with howling, screaming gusts of southerly wind, and during the night we were treated to a fierce display of storm, thunder and lightning and rain.

The gale caused one collision on the canal, and 25 steamers were delayed near the Bitter Lake. It broke down the railway and sanded it up for miles, and it levelled 50 English and 40 Egyptian telegraph posts, an ungentle hint to prefer the telephone. Saturday, the beginning of winter, opened with a cold, raw souther and a surging sea which washed over the dock piers. In such weather it was impossible to embark ten mules without horse-boxes.

On Sunday the waves ran high, but the gale fell about sunset to a dead calm, as usual in the Gulf. The breakers and white horses at once disappeared, and the slaty surface, fringed with dirty yellow, immediately re-exhumed its robes of purple and turquoise blue. The ill wind, however, had blown us some good by deluging with long-hoped-for rain the now barren mountains of Midian.

This Fortuna, according to the people, sets in with the fourth Coptic month, Kehak, which begins the first Arabian 40-day period, and the fourth day is known as the Imtizaj al-Fazlayan, or mixture of the two seasons, autumn and winter. The storm is expected to blow three days from the Aziyab, or southeast, or from the Shurs, southwest. The qualities of the several wind are described in the following distich. Marisi Sheitan wa Ghabi Wazirhu

tiab sultan wa sha'qi nazir hu the south-westers a satan and the westers his minister the northers a sultan and the easters his man on the other hand fair weather was predicted after the first quarter of the moon december twelfth according to the saying of the arab sailor when the moon sleeps the seaman may sleep when the moon stands the seaman must stand

The sleeping moon, Naim or Aqid, also called Yamani, is that of the first quarter which we mark concave to the left. The standing moon is that of the last.

Our stay at Suez was saddened by the sudden death of Marius Isnard, who had acted cook to the first Kharivyal expedition. The poor lad, aged only eighteen, had met us at the Suez station, delighted with the prospect of another journey. He had neglected his health, and after a suppression of two days, which he madly concealed, gangrene set in, and he died a painful death at the hospital during the night preceding our departure."

on december tenth we ran down from suez quay in the boat of the sea teir al bachr the harbour moosh or little steam launch accompanied by the governor said b who has not yet been made a pasha by mr consul west by the genial raif b wakil el

or acting Commodore of the Station, by Mr. Willoughby Falconer, my host at Suez, by the Messieurs Levique, and by other friends. In the highest spirits, we boarded our gun carriage, the Avizo Mojbir, Captain Mohamed Siraj, and after many mutual good wishes, we left the new docks at 6.10 p.m.

Nothing could be more promising than the weather. A young moon mirrored in a sea smooth as oil. The giver of good news, El Mokhbir, however, for once failed in her mission. She had lately conducted herself well upon a trial trip round the Zenobia light ship, or Newport Rock, but the two Arab firemen who act as engineers, worn out greybeards that hated the idea of formulas on the barbarous Arabian shore, had choked the tubes with wastage and had filled a single boiler, taking care to plug up instead of opening the relief pipe.

"'The consequence was that the engine sweated at every pour, "'steam instead of water streamed from the sides, "'and the chimney discharged, besides smoke, a heavy shower of rain. "'The engine, John Jameson, engineer, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1866, "'a good article in prime condition "'as far as a literally rotten boiler would allow, "'presently revenged itself by splitting the air-pipe "'of the condenser from top to bottom, "'and after two useless halts the captain reported to me "'that we must return to sewers. "'What a beginning!'

The fracture somewhat relieved the machinery. We did better work after than before the accident, but we were ignobly towed into the docks by the ship's boats.

A telegram with a procès verbal was at once sent off to the Prince, Said Bey and Raif Bey hastened to our aid, and Mr. Williams, superintending engineer of the Kharevia line, with the whole of his staff, stripped and set to work at the peccant tubes and the air pump. They commenced with extinguishing a serious fire which burst from the waste room, by no means pleasant when close to kegs of blasting powder carefully sewn up in canvas.

They laboured with a will, and before sunset, Mr Williams informed us that they would guarantee the engines for eight days when we were starting off on a dangerous cruise for four months. He also supplied us with an Egyptian boilermaker, and with eleven instead of sixty new tubes. We lost forty-two of the old ones between Suez and El Mueyla. Before sunset, we made a trial trip, the wretched old kettle acting temps bien comme mal. We returned to embark the soldiers and the mules, and we set out for a second time at 5.30 p.m.

The Makhbir, 130 feet long, 380 tons, and 80 to go horsepower, under charge of the English, or rather, Scotch, engineer, Mr David Dugid, who had taken the place of the two Arab firemen, began with 7.5 knots an hour, 68 revolutions per minute, and a pressure of 9 pounds to the square inch. The condenser vacuum was 26 inches, 30 being complete, or 13 pounds. Next morning, the rate declined to 6 miles in consequence of the boiler leaking, and the matters became steadily worse.

As a French writer of the genre humain, we were placed not entre le bien et le mal, but entre le mal et la pire. After sundry, narrow escapes in the Gulf of Aqaba, we were saved, as will be seen, by a manner of miracles. Briefly, the Mokhbir caused as much risk, heartburn, and loss of time.

7am December 11th, founders crossing the Birkat Faraun, Pharaoh's Gulf, some 60 miles from the Great Port. It's horrors to native craft I've already described in my pilgrimage. Between this point and Ras Zafaranar, higher up, the wind seems to split, a strong southerly gale will be blowing, whilst an older of equal pressure prevails at the gulf head and vice versa. Suez indeed appears to be, in more ways than one, a hydrographical puzzle.

when it is low water in and near the harbour the flow is high between the streets of Jabal and Daedalus Light and the ebb tide runs out about two points across the narrows while the flood runs in on a line parallel with it finally when we returned hardly making headway against an angry norther Suez enjoying the sweet south was congratulating the voyagers upon their weather

"'The loss of a good working day soon made itself felt. "'The north wind rose, causing the lively Mokhbir, "'whose ballast, by the by, was all on deck, "'to waddle dangerously for the poor mules, "'and it was agreed, Nam Con, to put into Tor Harbour. "'We found ourselves at 10am December 12th "'within the natural pier of Coraline, "'and we were not alone in our misfortune. "'An English steamer making sewers was our companion. "'This place had superseded Elwidge "'as the chief quarantine station for the return pilgrimage, "'and I cannot sufficiently condemn the change.'

the day lagged slowly as we walked in grief by the merge of many-voiced sounding sea but we looked in vain for our tender a sand-book of fifty tons el muzahil res ramazan which prince hossein had thoughtfully sent with us as a post-boat

she disappeared on the evening of the eleventh and she did not make active presence until the sixteenth when her master was at once imprisoned in the fort of el moela moreover the owner mohammed bohet of suez who had received ninety pounds as advance for three months others said sixty pounds for four provided her with only a few days provision leaving us to ration his crew

A wintry norther in these latitudes is not easily got rid of. According to the people here, as in the Aqaba Gulf, it lasts three days and dies after a quiet noon, whereas on the 13th, when we expected an escape, it

It rose angrily at 1pm. I was much cheered by the pleasant news of Monsieur Bianchi, the local deputato di Sanita, who assured us that a pernicio was raging at El Moela and that it was certain death to pass one night in the fort. The only fire that emitted all this smoke was the fact that during the date harvest of northwestern Arabia, July and August, agues are common, and that at all seasons the well water is not honest and is supposed to breed trifling chills. In

In the prairies of the far west, I heard of a man who rode some hundreds of miles to deliver himself of a lie.

nothing like solitude and the desert for freshening the fancy. Another individual who was much exercised by our journey was Khawaje Constantine, a Syrian-Greek trader, son of the old agent of the convent, whose blue goggles and comparatively tight pantalons denoted a certain varnish and veneer. It is his practice to visit El Mawela once every six months when he takes, in exchange for cheap tobacco, second-hand clothes and poor cloth, the coral,

the pearls fished for in April, the gold dust, the fines of coin, and whatever else will bring money. Such is the course and custom of all these small monopolists who at Ratha and elsewhere much disliked to see quiet things moved.

At length, after a weary day of faniente, when even la Samuel se faisait prier, we hardened our hearts, and at 9pm, as the gale seemed to slumber, we stood southwards. The mojibir rolled painfully off Ras Mohamed, which obliged us with its own peculiar gusts, and the Aqaba gulf, as usual, acted wind-sail. A long detour was necessary in order to spare the mules, which, however, are much less liable to injury under such circumstances than horses having a knack of learning to use sea-legs.

the night was atrocious so was the next morning but about noon we were cheered by the sight of the glorious mountain walls of well-remembered midian which stood out of the clear blue sky in passing grandeur of outline in exceeding splendid dower of colouring and in marvellous sharpening of detail once more the power of the hills was on us

3pm had struck before I found ourselves in broken water off the fort of El Mueyla, where our captain cast a single anchor and where we had our first escape from drifting upon the razor-like edges of the Coralline reefs. In fact, everything looked so menacing with surging sea around and sailor storm clouds to westward that I resolved upon revisiting our old haunt, the safe and dock-like Sham Yahar.

Here we entered without accident and were presently greeted by the Sayyid Abd al-Rahim, our former Khalifa al-Bashi, who had ridden from Al-Mu'ayla to receive us. The news was good. A truce of one month had been concluded between the Huaytat and the Mazar, probably for the better plundering of the pilgrims. This year the latter were many. The Waqfa, or standing upon Mount Arafat, fell upon a Friday. Consequently it was Haj al-Akhbar, or Greater Pilgrimage, very crowded and very dangerous, in more ways than one.

I had given a free passage to one Suleyman al-Tahi who declared himself to be one of the Beni Ukhbar when he was a Huweti of the Giraffin clan. After securing a free passage and provision gratis when the ship anchored, he at once took French leave. On return, I committed to him the tender mercies of the governor Saeed Bey. The soldiers, the quarrymen and the mules were landed and the happy end of the first stage brought with it a feeling of intense relief like that of returning to Alexandria. Hitherto, everything had gone wrong. The delays and difficulty at Cairo,

at Suez, the death of poor Marius Isnad and the furious storm, the breakdown of the engine, the fire in the waste room, and lastly, the rough and threatening gale between the harbour and El Mueyla.

"'What did the wise king mean by "'better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof? "'I only hope that it may be applicable for the present case. "'In the presence of our working ground, "'all evils were incontinently forgotten, "'and after the usual dankness of the Egyptian capital "'and the blustering winds of the Gulf and the sea, "'the soft and delicate air of the Midian shore acted like a cordial. "'For the first time after leaving Alexandria, "'I felt justified in Taper de L'Oil with the clearest of consciences.'"

the preliminary stage ended with this embarking at the fort al moela all our stores and properties including sundry cases of cartridges and five hundred pounds of pebble powder which had been stored immediately under the main cabin and its eternal cigarettes and aliments

The implements as well as the provisions were made over to the charge of an old Albanian, one Rajab Agha, who at first acted as our magazine man for a consideration of two Napoleons per month in advance if possible. This done, the Makhbir returned into the Dock Yaha in order to patch up her kettle, which seemed to grow worse under every improvement. We accompanied her after ordering a hundred camels to be collected, well knowing that as this was the Berem Id, or Greater Festival, nothing whatever would be done during its three days duration.

"'The respite was not unwelcome to me. It seemed to offer an opportunity for recovering strength. At Cairo I had taken the advice of a learned friend, if not an apostle of temperance, at any rate sorely afflicted with the temperance idea, who, by threats of confirmed gout and lumbago, fatty degeneration of the heart and liver, ended in the possible rupture of some valve, had persuaded me that man should live upon a pint of claret per diem. How dangerous is the clever brain with a monomania in it!'

According to him, a glass of sherry before dinner was a poison, whereas half the world, especially the eastern half, prefers its potations pre-prandially, a quarter of the liquor suffices, and both appetite and digestion are held to be improved by it. The result of turning over a new leaf, in the shape of a file of thin Gladstone, was a lumbago which lasted me a long month, and which disappeared only after a liberal inhibition of diffusible stimulants.

it required no small faith in one's good star to set out for a six weeks work in the desert under such conditions my consolation however was contained in the lines attributed to a half-dozen who wrote good english

He either fears his fate too much, or his deserts are small. Who dares not put it to the touch, to gain or lose it all? This time, however, mind was tranquil whatever matter might suffer. As the novelist says, lighting upon a grain of gold or silver betokens that a mine of the precious metal must be in the neighbourhood.

It had been otherwise with my first expedition, a forlorn hope, a miracle of moral audacity, the heaviest of responsibilities incurred upon the slightest of justifications, upon the pinch of sand which a tricky and greedy old man might readily have salted. It reminds me of a certain Philip Sober, who in the morning fainted at the sight of the precipice which he had scaled when Philip drank. I look back with amazement upon number one. End of chapter one

You're listening to Classic Audiobook Collection. Give us five stars and share with a friend who likes free audiobooks as much as we do. Now back to the show. Chapter 2 of The Land of Midian, revisited by Richard F. Burton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Paul Welford. Chapter 2. The start from El Muehle to the White Mountain and Ainur. I landed at

at El Mueyla described in my last volume on the auspicious Wednesday December the 19th 1877 under a salute from the gunboat Mojbir which the fort answered with a rattle and a patter of musketry. All the notables received us in line drawn up on the shore close to our camp. To the left stood the civilians in tulip coloured garb next with a garrison a dozen bashe-bazouks en bourgeois and mostly armed with matchlocks

then came out quarrymen in uniform but without weapons and lastly the escort of 25 men held a place of honour on the right.

The latter gave me a loud, hip, hip, hurrah, as I passed. The tents, a total of twenty, included two four-pullers for our mess and for the stores, with several large canvas sheds, pals the Anglo-Indians called them, gleamed white against the dark green fronds of the date grove, and the magnificent background of the scene was the debach block of the Tehama or Lolland Mountains.

the usual palaver at once took place during which everything was sweet as honey after this pleasant prelude came the normal difficulties and disagreeables it had been reported that i was the happy possessor of twenty-two thousand pounds mostly to be spent at almohela the unsettled arabs plunder and slay the settled arabs slander and cheat

A whole day was spent in inspecting the soldiers and mules, in dispatching a dromedary post to Suez with news of our unexpectedly safe arrival, and in conciliating the claims of rival Bedouin. His Highness the Viceroy had honoured with an order to serve as Hassan ibn Salim, Sheikh of the Beni Uqbar, and a small tribe which will be noticed in a future page.

Last spring, these men had carried part of our caravan to Enuna, and they're having no important blood feuds. I had preferred to employ them, but Abadel Nibi of the Taghiat-Hoyat clan had been spoilt by overkindness during my reconnaissance of 1877. Besides, I'd given him a bowie knife without taking a penny in exchange. In my first volume, he appears as a noble savage with a mixture of the gentleman. Here, he becomes a mere fella-bedawi.

The Clements met with the usual ceremony, right hands placed on the opposite left breasts. This is not done when there is bad blood, foreheads touching, and the words of peace, salam, ceremoniously ejaculated by both mouths. Then came the screaming voices, the high words, and the gestures, which looked as if the courbage or whip were being administered. The Hueti stubbornly refused to march with the other tribe, whom, moreover, he grossly insulted. He

He professed perfect readiness to carry me and mine gratis, thus while driving the hardest bargain. He spoke of our land when the country belongs to Khareev. He openly denied his allegiance. He was convicted of saying, if these Christians find gold, there will be much trouble or fitna to us Muslims. And at a subsequent time, he went so far as to abuse an officer. I had sheikhed him, that is, promoted him in rank, said the Sayyid Abd al-Rahim, and the honour had completely changed his manners.

we will small him was my reply the only remedy in fact was to undo what had been done to cut down as easterners say the tree which i had planted so he was solemnly and conspicuously disrated the fee one dollar per diem allotted as travelling and escort allowance to the chiefs was publicly taken from him and he at once subsided into an ignoble

under the lead of his uncle, Sheikh Al-An ibn Rabi. The latter is a man of substance who can collect at least 2,000 camels. Though much given to sulking on the whole, he behaved so well that the expedition ended, I recommended him to His Highness the Viceroy for appointment to the chieftainship of his tribe and the usual yearly subsidy. With him was associated his cousin, Sheikh Furej, an excellent man of whom I shall have much to say, and thus we had to fee three Badawi chiefs, including Hassan.

The latter was a notable intriguer and mischief-maker, ever breeding bad blood, and his temper was rather violent than sullen. When insulted by a soldier, he would rush off for his gun, ostentatiously light the match, walk about for an hour or two, threatening to shoot, and then, apparently, forget the whole matter. All wanted to let their camels by the day, whereas the custom of Arabia is to bargain for the march.

Thus, the pilgrims pay one dollar per stage of twelve hours, and the post-dramatry demands the same sum, besides subsistence money and bakshish, but our long and frequent holds rendered this proceeding unfair to the Bedouin. I began by offering seven piastres tariff, and ended by agreeing to pay five per diem while in camp, and ten when on the road. Of course it was too much, but our supply of money was ample, and the viceroy had desired me to be liberal."

In the Nile Valley, where the price of a camel is some 20 pounds, the average daily hire would be one dollar. On the other hand, the animal carries during short marches 700 pounds. The American officers in Upper Egypt reduced this to 300 pounds, the 500 pounds heaped on by the Sudanese merchants. In India, we considered 400 pounds a fair load, and the Midianite objects to anything beyond 200 pounds.

I have no intention of troubling the reader with a detailed account of our first three stages from El Mueyla to Jebel Abiazo White Mountain.

On December 21st, leaving camp, the most disorderly of caravans, 106 camels instead of 80, dromedaries not included, we marched to the mouth of Wadi Tirim, where we arrived before our luggage and provisions, lacking even Adam's ale. The sheikhs took all the water which could be found in the palm boothies near the shore and drank coffee behind a bush. This sufficed to give me the measure of these wall jumpers. Early next morning I set the quarrymen to work with pick and basket at the northwestern angle of the old fort.

The latter shows above ground only the normal skeleton tracery of coralline rock crowning the gentle sand swell which defines the lip and jaw of the wadi and defending the townlet built on the northern slope and plain. The dimensions of the work are 55 metres each way. The curtains, except the western, where stood the barbel bahr or sea gate were

were supported by one central as well as by angular bastions the northern face had a cant of 32 degrees east magnetic and the north-western tower was distant from the c 72 meters whereas the south-western numbered only 60 the spade showed a substratum of thick old wall untrimmed granite and other hard materials further down were various shells especially benitiae, drachma gigantea the harp here called silinbaz and the pearl oyster sheep bones and palm charcoal

Pottery, admirably cooked, as the Bedouin remarked, and glass of surprising thinness, iridised by damp to rainbow hues. This, possibly with the remains of lachrymatories, was very different from the modern bottle green, which resembles the old Roman. Lastly appeared a ring bezel of lapis lazuli. Unfortunately, the royal gem of Epiphanius was without inscription.

Whilst we were digging, the two staff officers rode to the date groves of Wadi Tirim and made a plan of the ancient defences. The results of the first Kharivile expedition had either not been deposited at or had been lost in the staff bureau Cairo. They found that the late torrents had filled up the sand pits acting as wells and the people assured them that the Fiomara had ceased to show perennial water only about five or six years ago.

The second march was disorderly at first. It reminded me of driving a train of unbroken mules over the prairies. The men were as wild and unmanageable as their beasts. It was everyone's object to get the maximum of money for the minimum of work. The escort took a special care to see that all their belongings were loaded before ours were touched. Each load was felt and each box was hand-weighed before being accepted. The heaviest, rejected by the rich, were invariably left to the poorest and lowest clansmen with the weakest and leanest of animals.

all at first especially objected to the excellent boxes a great comfort made for the expedition at the citadel cairo but they ended with bestowing their hatred upon the planks the tables and the long tent-poles

as a rule after the fellows had protested that their camels were weighted down to the earth we passed them on the march comfortably riding for the auburn can't walk and no wonder at the halting-place they unbag a little barley and wheat-meal make dough thrust it into the fire bake bread and wash it down with a few drops of dirty water this copious refection ends in a thimble full of thick blank coffee and a pipe

at home they have milk and ghee or clarified butter in plenty during the season game at times and on extraordinary occasions a goat or a sheep which however are usually kept for buying corn in egypt but it is a caution to see them feed ala

Nothing shabbier than the pack saddles, nothing more rotten than the ropes. As these desert ships must weigh about half the sturdy animals of Syria and the Egyptian Delta, future expeditions will perhaps do well to march their carriage round Al-Aqaba. The people declare that the experiment has been tried, but that the civilised animals sicken and die in these barrens. They forget, however, the two pilgrim caravans.

At this season, the beasts are half-starved. Their kitchen is a meagre ration of bruised beans, and their daily bread consists of the dry leaves of thorn trees beaten down by the machbat, a flail-like staff, and caught in a large circle of matting, al-khassaf. In Sinai, the vegetation fares even worse. The branches are rudely lopped off to feed the flocks. Only holy trees escape this mutilation. With the greatest difficulty, we prevented the Arabs tethering their property all night close to our tents.

Either the brutes were cold, or they wanted to browse or to meet a friend. Every movement was punished with a ringing of the halter, and the result may be imagined. We slept that night at Wadi Sharma. Of this ruined town a plan was made for the gold mines of Midian by Lieutenant Amir, who alone is answerable for its correctness. We afterwards found layers of ashes, slag, and signs of metalworking to the northeast of the enceinte where the furnace probably stood.

The outline measures 1906 metres, not several kilometres, and desultory digging yielded nothing but charcoal, cinders and broken pottery. It was not before 9am on the next day that I could mount my old white stumbling starting mule, the delay being caused by Monsieur Marie's small discovery, which will afterwards be noticed. We crossed both branches of the Shama water, and ascending the long sand slope of the right bank, we again passed the Badawi Cemetery.

I sent Lieutenants Amir and Yusuf to prospect certain stone heaps which lay seaward of the graves, and they found a little heptangular demi-loon concave to the north, the curtains varying from a minimum length of 10 to a maximum of 80 metres, and the thickness averaging 2 metres 75 centimetres. It was possibly intended, like those above Wadi Tirim, to defend the western approach, and superficially viewed, it looks like a line of stones heaped up over the dead, with that fine bird's-eye view of the valley, which

which the Badawi loves for his last sleeping place. Lentz we passed through the dry barb sea gate, cut by a torrent in the regular line of the Coralline cliff, the opening of the Wadi Malar, off which lay our sambuk. Matching up the Wadi Makada, our experienced eyes detected many small outcrops of quartz formerly unobserved in the soul and on the banks. The granite hills here, as throughout Midian, were veined and diked with two different classes of platonic rock.

The red and pink are felsites, or fine-grained porphyries. The black and bottle green are the coarse-grained varieties, easily disintegrating and forming hollows in the harder granite. The ride was made charming by the frontage of picturesque Jebel Urnab, with its perpendicular pinnacles upon rock sheets, dropping clear a thousand feet, its jutting bluffs, its three huge flying buttresses that seem to support the mighty wall crest, and its many spits and organs, some capped with finials that assume the aspect of Logan stones.

There was no want of animal life, and the yellow locusts were abroad. One had been seized by a little lizard, which showed all the violent muscular action of the crocodile. There were small, long-eared hares suggesting the leperide, signs of gazelles appeared, and the Bedouin spoke of wolves and hyenas, foxes and jackals.

we camped upon the old ground to the south-west of the jebel el abiaz and at the halt our troubles forthwith began the water represented to be near is nowhere nearer than a two hours march for camels and it is mostly derived from rain puddles in the great range of mountains which subtends maritime midian but this was our own discovery

The half-fella Bedarwin, like the shepherds their predecessors in the days of Abimelech and Jethro, are ever chary of their treasure, the only object being extra camel hair. After eating your salt, a rite whose significance, by the by, is wholly ignored throughout Midian and its neighbourhood, they will administer under your eyes a silencing nudge to an over-communicative friend. The very children that drive the sheep and goats instinctively deny all knowledge of the themale, pits, and holes acting as wells."

At the head of the Wadi al-Maqarada we halted six days December 24th to 30th. This delay gave us time to correct the misapprehensions of our flying visit.

The height of the Jebel al-Alabyas, whose colour makes it conspicuous even from the offing when sailing along the coast, was found to be 350, not 600 feet above the plain. The Grand Filon, which is a Mauvent Plaison of a reviewer called the Grand Filou, forms a nick near the hilltop but does not bifurcate the interior. The fork is of heavy greenish porphyritic trap, also probably titaniferous iron with a trace of silver, where it meets the quartz and the granite.

standing upon the old man with which we had marked the top i counted five several dykes or outcrops to the east inland and one to the west cutting the prism from the north to the south the superficial matter of these injections showed concentric circles like ropy lava the shape of the block is a saddle-back and the lay is west-east curving round to the south

The formation is of the coarse grey granite general throughout the province, and it is diked and sliced by quartz veins of the amorphous type, crystals being everywhere rare in Midian. The filons and filets, varying in thickness from eight metres to a few lines, are so numerous that the whole surface appears to be quartz tarnished by atmospheric corrosion to a dull pale grey-yellow, while the fracture, sharp and cutting as glass or obsidian, is dazzling and milk-white, except where spotted with pyrites, copper or iron. The

The Neptunian quartz again has everywhere been cut by platonic injections of porphyritic trap, veins averaging perhaps two metres with a north-south strike and dip of 75 degrees magnetic west. If the capping were removed, the subsurface would doubtless bear the semblance of a honeycomb.

The Jebel al-Abyaz is apparently the centre of the quartzose outcrop in North Median Majin Propa. We judged that it had been little worked by the ancients, from the rents in the reefs that outcrops like a castle wall on the northern and eastern flanks.

There are still traces of roads or paths, while heaps, strews and scatters of stone handbroken are not showing the natural fracture, whiten like snow, the lower slopes of the western hill base. They contrast curiously with the hard felspathic stones and the lithographic calcaires bearing the moss-like impress of metallic dendrites.

These occur in many parts near the seaboard, and we found them in the southern as well as in northern Midian. The conspicuous hill is one of four mamelons thus disposed in bird's-eye view. The dotted line shows the supposed direction of the load in the Jebel al-Baza, the collective name. On the plane to the north of Jebel Abiyaz, I found curdles of porphyritic trap and parallel trap dykes, cutting the courses of large-grained grey granite, as many as three outcrops of the former appeared within fourteen yards.

This convinced me that the whole of the solid square 30 km 6x5 where the quartz emerges is underlaid by veins and veinlets of the same rock. Moreover, I then suspected and afterwards ascertained that the quartz of the Jebel al-Baza, as the Bedouin call this section, is not a local peculiarity. It everywhere bursts, not only the plain between the sea and the coast range, but the two parallels of mountain which confine it on the east."

In fact, throughout our northern march, the Arabs, understanding that its object was Maru, the generic name for quartz, brought us loads of specimens from every direction. Nothing is easier than to work the purely superficial part. A few barrels of gunpowder and half-dozen English miners with pick and crowbar suffice. Even our dawdling, feckless quarryman easily broke and spelled for camel-loading some six tons in one day.

our short sennait was not wasted yet i had an uncomfortable feeling that the complication of the country called for an exploration of months and not hours every day some novelty appeared the watercourses of the ratz or coast-range were streaked with a heavy metallic quartzose black sand which monsieur marie vainly attempted to analyse

we afterwards found it in almost every wadi and running north as far as al akhbar whilst with few exceptions all our washings of red earth claretic sand and bruised stone yielded it and it only it is apparently the produce of granite and cyanite and it abounds in african egypt

I was in hopes that tungsten and titaniferous iron would make it valuable for cutlery as the black sand of New Zealand. Experiments in the citadel Cairo produced nothing save magnetic iron with a trace of lead, but according to Colonel Ross, the learned author of pyrology or fire chemistry, it is isurinol magnetic ilmenite titaniferous iron sand containing 88% of iron oxides and sesquioxides with 11% of titanic acid.

the arabs brought in fine specimens of hematite and of copper ore from wadi rha or rheux six miles to the south of camp here were found two water-pits in a well-defined valley the nearer some ten miles southwest of jebel al abiyaz the other about two miles further to the northwest making a total of twelve

about the latter there was however no level ground for tents a mile and a half walking almost due north led to a veinlet of copper thirty metres long by point three thick with an east-west strike and dip of forty five degrees south this metal was also found in the hills to the south

crystalline pyroxene and crystallized sulphates of lime apparently abound while the same is the case of carbonate of manganese and other forms of the metal so common in western sinai briefly our engineer came to the conclusion that we were in the very heart of a mining region we made a general reconnaissance december twenty seventh of a place whence specimens of pavernine quartz had come to hand

Following the Wadi Ifriya, round the north and east of the White Mountain, we fell into the Wadi Simakh, or Wild Sumakh. That drains the great gap between the pinnacles and the buttresses of Urnub Tehama section.

after riding some two miles we found to the south-east fragments of dark iridescent and metallic quartz they emerged from the plain-like walls bearing north-south with thirty-six degrees of westing and a westward dip of fifteen to twenty degrees exactly the conditions which australia seeks and which produces the huge welcome nugget of ballarat

they crop out of the normal trap-dyed grey granite and select specimens show the fine panache lustre of copper m marie afterwards took from one of the geodes a pinch of powder weighing about half a gram and coupled a bright dustshot bead weighing not less than two centigrams

"'Without further examination, he determined it to be Argentiferous "'when it was possibly iron or antimony. "'On the other hand, the silver discovered in the Grand Fionn "'by so careful and conscientious an observer as Gatineau Bay "'and the fact that we are here on the same line of outcrop "'and at a horizon 300 feet lower are reassuring. "'This vein, which may be of great length and puissance, "'I took the liberty of calling the Fionn Hussein "'from the prince who had so greatly favoured the expedition.'

here we hit upon the negroes or coloured quartzos formations of mexico in which silver appears as a sulphure and we may expect to find the colorado or argillaceous that produces the noble metal in the forms of cleroe bromeo and iodure the former appears everywhere in midian but our specimens are all superficially taken a siluvaire to ascertain the real value and the extent of the deposits required exposure of the veins at a horizon far lower than our means and appliances allowed us to reach

If the rock proves argentiferous, I should hope to strike virgin silver in the capillary or arborescent shape below. Above it, as on the summit of Jebel al-Abyaz and generally in the Maru hills and hillocks of North Midian, the dull white quartz is comparatively barren, showing specks of copper, crystallites of pyrites, the crow gold of the Old English miner, and dark dots of various metal which still await analysis.

Thus I would divide the metallivorous quartzes of the North Midianite region into two chief kinds, those stained green and light blue, whose chief metallic element is copper with its derivatives, and the iridescent negro which may shelter the colorado. In South Midian the varieties of quartz are incomparably more numerous, and almost every march shows a new colour or constitution.

About Jebel al-Abyaz, as in many mining countries, water is a serious difficulty. The principal deposit lies some three miles east of the camping ground in a nakab or gorge, al-Asaba, offsetting from the great fiumara al-Simak, and apparently it is only a rain pool. Throughout Midian, I may say, men still fetch water out of the rock.

m philippine while pottering about this place saw two beaden or ibex with their young which suggest a permanent supply of drink however that may be norton's abyssinian pumps for which i had vainly applied at cairo would doubtless discover the prime necessary in the wadis many of the latter being still damp and muddy moreover

The Cribulé continue à griller le filtrance, the invention of Monsieur Huet and Geyler, introduced, we are told, into the mechanical treatment of metals, a principle which greatly economises fluid, founded upon the fact that sands of nearly the same size but of different densities, when mixed in liquid and subjected to rapid vertical oscillation, range themselves by order of weight, the heavier sinking and not allowing passage to lighter matter. The new sieves offer the advantage of a single and simple instrument with increased facility for treating poor dirt."

Finally, as I shall show, the country is prepared by nature to receive a tramway and the distance to the sea does not exceed 14 miles, liberally computed. Either the rainwater affected the health of the party or it suffered from excessive dryness and variations of the atmosphere 800 to 900 feet above sea level, ranging in the tense between 92 degrees by day and 45 degrees at night, a piercing, killing temperature in the desert.

Moreover, the cold weather is mostly the unwholesome season in hotlands and vice versa. Hence the Arab proverb, Hararat el Jebel walabad ha, the heat of the hills and not their cold. Old Haji Wali lost his appetite, complained of indigestion,

and clamoured to return home. Ahmed, Kapitan, suffered from sulb, or lumbago, and bad headache, while Lieutenant Yusuf was attacked by an ague and fever, which raised the mouth thermometer to 102-103 degrees, calling loudly for aconite.

These ailments affected the party more or less the whole way, but it was not pleasant to see them begin so soon. When our work of collecting specimens, three tons from the Jebel Abiyaz and three from Fidon Hossein, was finished, I resolved upon returning to the coast and treating our loads at the Sharm el-Water. We reached the valley mouth on December 30th. We greatly enjoyed the change from the harshness of the inland to the mildness of the seaboard air.

We stayed at Sharmar, much disliking its remarkably monotonous aspect for another week, till January 7th, 1878. Yule, the wheel, despite the glorious tree logs and roaring fires, had been a failure at the White Mountain. The dragoman had killed our last turkey and forgotten to bring the plump pudding from El Mueyla. There was champagne, but that is not the stuff wherewithal to wash down tough mutton.

"'New Year's Day, on the other hand, had all the honours. "'Its birth was greeted with a flow of whisky-punch, "'wherein wine had taken the place of water, "'and we drank the health of His Highness, "'the founder of the expedition, in a bottle of dry mum.'

The evening ended with music and dancing, by praying the old year out and the new year in. Massal, the baroudji, performed a wild solo on his bugle, and another negro, Ahmed al-Shinawi, played with the nai or reed pipe, one of those monotonous and charming minor key airs. I call them so for want of a word to express them which extend from Midian to Trafalgar, and find their ultimate expression in the lovely Iberian Zazuela.

the boy hossein ghaninar a small cyclops in a brown felt culotte and a huge military overcoat caught short caused roars of laughter by his ultra gadjetanian style of dancing i have also reason to suspect that a jig and a breakdown tested the solidity of the plank table while a jew's harp represented europe

In fact, throughout the journey, reminiscences of Mabille and the music halls contrasted strongly with the memories of majestic and mysterious Midian. And to make the shock more violent, some friend, Malé Salsus, sent me copies of the Cosmopolitan Spectator and the courteous Mayfair, which at once became waste paper for Badawi cartridges.

Our Roche-Rachana New Year's Day was further distinguished by the discovery of vein and outcrop of metalliferous quartz about half an hour's walk and bearing nearly east 80 degrees magnetic from camp. We followed the Wadi Sharma and found above its gate the masonry foundation of a square work. Near it lay the graves of the wild men, one with the normal awning of palm fronds, onori, kozar. There were signs of stone quarrying, and at one place a road had been cut in the rock, leaving on the north the left side of the watercourse with its rushes.

Scopus, and huge-headed reeds, Arundo Donox, its dates and dorms, the two latter often scorched and killed by the careless Badawi, who were struck into a parallel formation, the Wadi al-Wuday bone-dry and much trodden by camels.

Arrived at the spot, we found that the confused mass of hills subtending the regular cliff line of the old coast are composed of a grey granite, seamed with snowy quartz, and cut by the usual bands of bottle-coloured porphyritic trap which here and there becomes red. Some of the heights are of greenish-yellow, chloritic feldspar, well adapted for brickmaking. The surface of the land is scattered with fragments of white silex and fine red jasper, banded with black or logistic iron.

This rock, close, hard, and fine enough to bear cutting, appears everywhere in scatters and amongst the conglomerates. Only one fossil was picked up, a mould so broken as to be quite useless. We also followed out Monsieur Marie's find, to which he had been guided by a patch of red matter, conspicuous on the road from Tyrium to Charmar. For forty minutes we skirted the seaward face of the old cliff, a line broken by many deep-water gashes and buttressed by gauze or high heaps of loose white sand.

We then turned eastward or inland, ascended a Nakabo gorge, and saw, as before, the corallines and carbonates of lime altered, fused, scorified, and blackened by heat injections, the grey granite's cord with quartz veins running in all rums, and the porphyritic trap forming crests that projected from the sand. The cupriferous stones struck east-west, with a dip to the south. The outcrops, visible without digging, measured 15 to 20 metres long, by one to one and a half in breadth."

new year's day also restored to us the pup peiji when quite a babe it had walked up to me in the streets of cairo evidently claimed acquaintanceship and straightway followed me into the shepherd's where having a certain sneaking belief in metempsychosis i provided it with bed and board

During our third march to the White Mountain, being given to violent yelps which startled both mules and camels, the small thing had been left to walk, and apparently made friends with an Arab goat herd. After nine days' absence without leave, Pagie reappeared with dirty rags tied round its bony back and wasted waist, showing an admirable skeleton and making the most frantic demonstrations of joy. The loss of the poor little brute had affected all our spirits. We thought that the hyenas and the ravens had seen the last of it, and it received a warm welcome home.

Monsieur Lacaze, unlike the rest, took a violent fancy for the Wedi Shammah. The water of scenery enchanted him. His sketches were almost confined to the palm growth and to the greenery, so unexpected in arid Midian, where, according to the old and exploded opinion, Moses wrote the Book of Job. The idea of Rabia is certainly not associated with the flowing rills and waving trees and rustling zephyrs. Every morning I used to awake surprised by the song of the Naid,

the little runnel whimpling down its bed of rushes, stone and sand, and the response of the palms making music in the land breeze. Finally, on New Year's Day, Lieutenant Amir, guided by Sheikh Faraj and escorted by soldiers and miners, made a three days trip to the Wadi Urnub. There he surveyed a large isolated Mara or quartz hill some 22 to 25 direct miles southeast of the main outcrop, thus giving a considerable extent to the northern mining focus.

This feature is described as being four or five times larger than the Jebel al-Abyaz proper, and the specimens of quartz and grey granite proved it to be of the same formation. It showed a broken outline with four great steps or dikes, which had apparently been worked. In the Basel valleys, and spread over the land generally, was found a heavy yellow sand, calcareous and full of silex. The guide called it Awal Hizmah, the Hizmah Frontier.

Our travellers returned by a parallel line, subtly and more direct. In the Wadi Urnub, the mazhar of the Salamat clan received them with apparent kindness, inwardly grumbling the while at their land being spied out, and they especially welcomed Furej, who, being a brave soldier, is also noted as a peacemaker. All the men were armed, and wore the same dress as the Huaytad. Like these, they also breed camels and asses, that is, they are not cow-Arabs.

Certain travellers on the Upper Nile have distributed the Bedouin into these two groups, add horse Arabs and ass Arabs, and you have all the divisions of race that's connected with the so-called lower animals. About three hours or 11 miles from Sharmar camp, some pyramids of sand were pointed out in the Wadi Ratiya,

The Bedouin call one of them the Gozet Hanan, Moaning Sandheap. They declare that when the Hajj caravans pass, or rather used to pass by that way, before the early 16th century, when Sultan Salim laid out his maritime high road, a nobar, or orchestra, was wont to sound within its bowels.

This tale, which by the by is told of two other places in Midian, may have suggested by the Nebel el-Nakas or Bell Mountain in Sinai land, but as the Arabs perform visitation and sacrifice to the moaning heap, the superstition probably dates from ancient days. Ruins are also reported to exist in the Jebel Fars, the southern boundary of the Nub Valley, and further south in the Jebel al-Harb.

I was told by someone whose name had escaped me of a dolman mounted upon three supports. Lieutenant Amir also brought copper ore from the Wadi Urnub and from Wadi al-Mukhbir, specimens of a metal which the Arab use as a khul or collyrium. It proved, however, iron, not antimony, and the same mistake had been made in the Sinaitic Peninsula.

At Wadi Shammar we rigged up, under the superintendence of Monsieur Philippine, a trough and a cradle for washing the black sands, the pounded quartz of the Jebel el-Abyaz and the red sands. These latter had shown a trace of silver one in ten thousand to the first expedition. We mixed it with mercury and amalgamed it in goatskins. The men moved them to and fro, but of course the water evaporated and the mass speedily became dry. The upper, or superficial white, yielded only, as far as our engineer could judge, a little copper and bright knobs of pyrites.

The Negros, or iridized formations of the Philon Hossein, on the lower horizon gave the dubious results already alluded to. All the experiments were conducted in the rudest way. Of course, a quantity of metal may have escaped notice, and a fair proportion of the powdered stone was reserved for scientific treatment in Europe.

During our first trip we had found upon the right jaw of the Wadi Sharma a ruined village of workmen, probably slaves, whose bothans measured some 12 feet by 8. They differ from the Nawamis or Mosquito huts, as the word is generally translated "only in shape". The latter are circular with a diameter of 10 feet, and they perfectly resemble the stone hovels in the Wadi Muqattab, which Professor Palmer, Desert of the Exodus, page 202, supposes to have been occupied by the captive miners and their military guardians.

this time we ascended the coralline ridge which forms the left jorm at its foot a rounded and half-degraded dorsum of stiff gravel the nucleus of its former self showed a segment of foundation wall and the state of the stone suggested the action of fire possibly here had been a furnace

the summit also bears signs of human occupation the southern part of the buttressed crest still supports a double concentric circle with a maximum diameter of about fifteen feet the outside is of earth apparently thrown up for a rampart behind a moat and the inside is of rough stones

Going south along the Dorsum we found remains of oval foundations, a trench apparently cut in the rock, pottery often an inch and more thick, and broken hand mills made of new red sandstone of the Hizmar. Finally at the northernmost point, where the cliff edge falls abruptly with a natural arch towards the swamp, about one kilometre broad at the barb, we came upon another circle of rough stones. We were doubtful whether these rude remains were habitations or old graves.

Nor was the difficulty solved by digging into four of them. The pick at once came upon the ground rock. Hitherto these ruins have proved remarkably sterile. The only product were pot sherds, fragments of hand mills and a fine lump of white marble or rukham, supposed to be come from Jebel al-Lawaz. Amongst our followers was a Qazi of the Arabs, one Jabir bin Abd al-Nabi, who is a manner of judge in civil but not in criminal matters.

Before the suit begins, the plaintiff or his surety deposits a certain sum in coin, corn or other valuables and laces damages at so much. The defendant, if inclined to contest the claim, pays into the court the disputed amount and the question is settled after the traditional and immemorial customs of the tribe. This man, covetous as any other disciple of Justinian, was exceedingly anxious to obtain the honorarium of a sheikh and

and he worked hard to deserve it shortly before our departure from shawarma he brought in some scoria and slag broken and streaked with copper in fact they are thinly scattered over the seaward slope of the left jaw where the stone nowhere shows a trace of the mineral in situ as however the expedition had found native copper in three places more or less near the jebel al labiaz it was decided that the ore had been brought from the interior

We were again puzzled concerning the form of industry which gave rise to such a large establishment as Sharma. Agriculture was suggested and rejected, and we finally resolved that it was a branch town that supplied ore to the great smelting place and workshop of the coast, Ainuna, and possibly carbonate of lime to serve for flux.

The distance along the winding wadi between the settlement and the sea westward, where the watercourse ends in sand heaps, is 7 to 8 miles, and the coast shows no sign of harbour or of houses. About 3 miles, however, to the north-west is the admirable Bay of Enuna, unknown to the charts. Defended on both sides by sand pits, and open only between the west and the north-west, where reefs and shoals allow but a narrow passage, its breadth across the mouth from east to west measures at least 5,000 metres, and the length inland, useful for refuge, is at least 3,000.

At the bottom of this noble liman, the kolpas, so scandalously abused by the ancients, are three sundry buttresses metalled with water-rolled stones and showing traces of graves. Possibly here may have been the site of an ancient settlement. The Arabs call the southern anchorage, marked by a post and a pit of brackish water, El Mosebe or Mosebet Shama.

Its only present use seems to be embarking bundles of rushes for mat-making in Egypt. The north-eastern end of the little gulf is the Gad, or Jad, or Mersa of El-Khareba, before described as the port of Enuna.

At the Musayba I stationed our tender, the Sambuk el Musahil, which carried our heavy goods, specimens by the ton, rations and stores, forge, planks and crowbars. The sailors lost no time in showing their rapacity. Every day they dundas for tobacco and when we made a counter-demand for the excellent fish which was caught in shoals, they simply asked, what will you pay for it? I imprudently left my keg of specimen spirits on board this ignoble craft and the consequence was that it speedily became bone dry.

The Moseba Bight is a direct continuation of the Wadi al-Malha which, joining that of Al-Makada, runs straight up the Jebel al-Abyaz and to the Filon Hussein. These metalliferous quartzers cannot be further from the coast than a maximum distance of 14 miles and the broad, smooth watercourse with its easy gradients points it out as the site of the future tramway.

I should prefer a simpler form of the Pioneer Steam Caravan or Saddle Pack Railway System patented by Mr John L Haddon CE formerly of Damascus. He recommends iron as the best material for the construction and the cost delivered at Alexandria would not exceed £1,200 instead of £3,000 to £20,000 per kilometre including the rolling stock.

As the distance from the port is nothing, 300 pounds per kilometer would be amply sufficient for fixing up but I should reduce the price to 500 pounds for the transport and some 50 tons per diem. By proper management of the rails or the main rail it would be easy for the trained camels to draw the train up the wadi and the natural slope towards the sea would give work only to the break where derailments are not possible.

At Sharma, we saw the crescent when the Englishmen turned their money into their pockets and the Egyptian officers muttered a blessing upon the coming moon. Every day, we waxed more weary of the place. Possibly, the memories of the first visit were not pleasant. Many in camp still suffered and an old Badawi, uncle to Sheikh Alain, died and was buried at Enuna.

The number of servants also made us uncomfortable. The head dragoman, whose memory was confined to his carnet, forgot everything, and had we trusted to him, half the supplies would have returned to Suez, probably for the benefit of his own shop at Zagazig. I soon found his true use, and always left him behind as a magazine man, storekeeper, and a guardian of reserve provisions. He was also a dangerous, mischief-making fellow, and such men always find willing ears that ought to know better.

Petros the Xantaman was the model of a Tipotenios or anybody who seemed to have been born limp without bones or brains. He was sent back as soon as possible to Cairo. The worst point of these worthies was that they prevented for their own reasons the natives working for us while they preferred eternal chatter and squabbles to working themselves. So the Greek element was reduced to George the cook a short, squat, unwashed fellow who looked like a fair Hercules out of luck who worked like three and who loudly clamoured for a revolver and a bowie knife.

"'His main fault, professionally speaking, "'was that he literally drenched us with the oil "'till the store happily ran out. "'His complexion was that of an animated ripe olive, "'evidently the result of his own cookery. "'His surprise when I imperatively ordered plain boiled rice "'instead of a mess dripping with grease "'and when told to boil the fish in seawater "'and to serve up the bouillon was high comedy. "'Doubtless he has often, since his return, "'astounded his Hellenion by describing "'our Frankish freaks and mad eccentricities.'

the stationary camp also retained lieut yusuf and messrs duguide and philippine with thirteen soldiers and sixteen miners the six camels were placed under gaber kazi el auban and all the stay-behinds were charged with washing the several earths with scouring the country for specimens and with transporting sundry tons of the black sand before mentioned

Old Hadji Wali, probably frightened by the Arabs and maddened by the idea that, during his absence in the thick of the cotton season, the Falaz of Zagazeg would neglect to pay their various debts, began to malinger, with such intensity of purpose that I feared lest he would kill himself to spite us.

the venerable shylock who ever pleaded poverty had made some three hundred pounds by lending a napoleon say on january the first which became a sovereign on february the first not to speak of the presents and benevolences which the debtor would be compelled to offer his creditor so he departed for el maweila whence some correspondent had warned him that a pilgrim boat was about to start declaring that he was dying and trotting his mule as hard as it would go the moment a serf corner was turned

he stayed two days on board the gunboat and straightway returned to egypt in the cotton season we had the supreme satisfaction however to hear that he had gone through the long quarantine at tor yet after our return he reproached me with inimitable coolness and frontery for not having behaved well to him

on the morning of january the seventh a walk of two hours and twenty minutes seven miles northwards and mostly along the shore of the noble moseibat sharma transferred us to well-remembered enuna the sea in places washed over slabs of the fine old conglomerates which in the country lined the banks and soles of all the greater wadis these are the cascalho of the brazil a rock which is treated by rejecting the pebbles and by pounding the silica's paste

"'The air was softer and less exciting than that of Sharma, "'and although the vegetation was of the crapaw-more-d'amour hue, "'here a sickly green, there a duller brown than April had showed. "'The scene was more picturesque, the gate was taller and narrower, "'and the recollection of a happy first visit made me return to it with pleasure.'

birds were more abundant long shanked waterfowl with hazel eyes red-legged rail the brown swallow of egypt green-blue flycatchers and a black muskivore with a snowy white rump of which i failed to secure a specimen we also saw the turn-coloured plover known in egypt as dominican and red kingfishers the game species were fine large green mallard

dark pintail quail and red beaked brown partridge with soft black eye new formations began to develop themselves and the sickly hues of the serpentines and the chlorites so rich in their new world appeared more charming than the brow of milk or cheek of rose

There were few changes. A half-peasant Badawi had planted a strip of barley near the camping place. The late floods had shifted the course of the waters. More date trees had been willfully burned. A big block of quartz, brother to that which we had broken, had been carried off, and where several of the old furnaces formerly stood, deep holes dug by the money-hunter now yawned. I again examined the two large fragments of the broken barrage and found that they were of uncut stone, compacted with fine cement, which contained palm charcoal."

At Inuna, we gave only one day to work.

While Monsieur Lacaze sketched the views, we blasted with gunpowder more than half the charcoal the Medan el-Feruz turquoise mine, as the Arabs called it on the right side of the Wadi. The colour and texture were so unlike the true lapis-farantis that we began to suspect, and presently, we ascertained from the few remaining fragments, it had been worked for copper, the carbonates and the silicates which characterised Cyprus. Presently, good specimens of the latter were brought to us from the Jebel al-Farah by a Bedouin pauper.

aid of the Tagiat Huayat tribe. These half-naked shepherds and goat herds who knew every stone in the land are its best guides, not the sheikhs who, as a rule, see a little or nothing outside their tent. From our camp, the direction as reported by Ahmed Kapton was 102 degrees magnetic and the distance three miles. I afterwards sent Lieutenant Yusuf from El Mawela to make a detailed plan. We also dug in an old pit among the Christian graves to the southeast of the camp and below the left jom of the gate.

here also the bedouin had been at work and when unable to work deep enough they told us wonderful tales of an alabaster slab which doubtless concealed vast treasures in arabia as in africa one must look out for what there is not as well as for what there is after spending a morning in sinking a twelve feet shaft we came upon a shapeless coralline boulder which in old times had slipped from the sea-face of the cliff to the left of the valley

I ascended this height and saw some stones disposed by the hand of man, but there was no sign of a large slave-miner settlement like that on the other side of the barb. In the afternoon, Mr. Clark led a party of quarrymen across the graveyards to El Creba, the seaport of Aenina, and applied them to excavating the floor of a cistern and the foundation of several houses. A little pottery was the only result. It

it was a slow walk of forty minutes unless the total length of the aqueducts would be three miles not between four and five kilometres i had much trouble and went to some expense in sending camels to fetch a written stone which placed at the head of every new buried corpse is kept there till another requires it it proved to be a broken marble pillar with a modern arabic epitaph

in the ghar al khareba the little inlet near the ghamrak or custom house as we called in waggary the shed of palm fronds at the base of the eastern sand spit lay five small sambuks which have not yet begun fishing for mother-of-pearl here we found sundry tents of the tagayah huay tat the half falas that own and spoil the once goodly land the dogs barked at us but the men never thought of offering us hospitality

We had an admirable view of the Taharmah mountains, Zahed with its nick, the parrot beak of Jebel el-Shati, the three perpendicular pinnacles and the flying buttresses of Jebel Urnab, the isolated lump of Jebel Fas, the single cupola of Jebel Harb, the huge block of Dibach with its tall truncated tower, the little Um Jadayl here looking like a pyramid, and the four mighty horns of Jebel Shar.

I left Inona under the conviction that it had been a great was-ha workshop, an embarking place of the coast section extending from El Mawila to Machna, and that upon it depended both Wadi Teriam and Shah Mar with their respective establishments in the interior. Moreover, the condition of the slag convinced me that the iron and the baser metals have been worked here in modern times, perhaps even in our own, but by whom I should not like to say. End of chapter 2

Embrace the chaos with Fnatic Sportsbook. This is the only sportsbook that gives you up to 10% fan cash back on every bet, win or lose. On top of that, new customers get up to $300 in bonus bets. Embrace the chaos all tournament long with Fnatic Sportsbook. Section 4 of the Land of Midian, revisited by Richard F. Burton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Paul Welford. Chapter 3. Breaking new ground to M'ghe Shueb.

On January 9th we left Enuna by the Hajrud and passed along the Quarry Hill visited during my first journey. The crest has old cuttings and new cuttings, the latter still worked for Badawi headstones. The dwarf pillar with the mysterious cup is reflected by the Nubians who hollow out the upper part of the stela to a depth of eight or ten inches without adding any ornament, hence perhaps the Swahili custom of the inserted porcelain plate.

after issuing from the stony and sandy gorge which forms the short cut we regained the hardsroad and presently sighted a scene readily recognised fronting us the north horizon was formed by the azure wall of tib ism the mountain of the good name

Backed by the far, grander peaks of Jebel Muzhafa, the latter rises abruptly from the bluer Gulf of Al-Aqaba and both trend to their culminating points inland or eastward. On our right followed the unpicturesque, metalliferous heap of Jebel Sahad or Ainunna Mountain, whose Braque de Roland seems to show from every angle. Its chocolate-coloured heights contain, they say, furnaces and mashghal or ateliers where the Maru quartz was worked for ore.

"'In places it is backed by the pale azure peaks of Jebel al-Lawz. "'This mountain of almonds is said to take its name from the trees, "'probably bitter, which flourish there "'as within the convent walls of St Catherine's Sinai. "'They grow, I was told, high up in the clefts and valleys, "'and here also are furnaces both above and below. "'Of its white, sparkling, and crystallised marble, "'truly noble material, a tombstone was shown to me, "'and I afterwards secured a slab with a broken Arabic inscription "'and a ball apparently used for rubbing down meal.'

the laurs appears to be the highest mountain in northern midian land unfortunately it is to be reached only via sharaf two long stations ahead and i could not afford time for geographical research to the prejudice of mineralogical

Its nearer foothill is the Jebel Khleif and this feature contains, according to the Bedouin, seven wells or pits whose bottom cannot be seen. Between the almond block and its northern continuation, Jebel Munifa, we saw a gorge containing water and sheltering at times a few tents of the Amirat Arabs. In the same block we also heard of a sarbut or rock said to be written over.

The regular cone of El Makla ends the prospect in the northeastern direction. Looking westwards we saw the ghastly bear and naked secondary formation, the Rukham of the Bedouin, not to be confounded with Rukham, alabaster or saccharine marble. We afterwards traced to this main feature of the Aqaba gulf as far south as the Wadi Hams

It is composed of the sulphates of lime, alabaster, gypsum and the plaster with which the tertiary basin of Paris supplies the world and of the carbonates of lime, marble, chalk, calxbar, shells and eggs. The broken crests of the Jibbel-el-Hamara, the Red Hills, Baking Machna and the jagged black peaks on their eastern parallel, the Kalbel-Nakla, look like platonic reefs or island chains emerging from the secondary sea.

The latter, whose bleached and skeleton white is stained here and there by greenish, yellow sands, chlorite and serpentine, stands boldly out from the chaos of purpling mountains composing Sinai and ending southwards in the azure knobs of three-headed Tirin Island. The country, in fact, altogether changed. Quartz...

disappeared and chlorite had taken its place we passed the night at al-sulayla aghri or hollow without drainage in which the sinking of water cakes with mud is covered within a regular circle of sassolaceous trees a patch of dark metallic green this usaila is eaten by camels but rejected by mules

here our post reached us from sewers on the seventh day having started on the second inst a dollar was offered to the badawi who eyed the coin indignantly declaring that it ought to be a guinea i had also given in some tobacco and repented as usual by generosity

Next day we finished the last and larger part of the second pilgrim stage from El Mueyla. Our Arabs had been dodging and much disappointed about converting a two days into a three days march. They punished us by feeding their camels on the road and by not joining us till the evening. As before there was no game till we approached the springs yet tufts and scatters of tamarisk, samur, inga and guis and araq, salvadora looked capable of sheltering it and now beyond the level and monotonous desert we began to see our destination.

palms and tufty trees at the mouth of a masked wadi. This watercourse runs between a background of reddish brown rock, the foothills and sub-ranges of the grand block El Zanar to the north and a foreground of pale yellow stark naked gypsum apparently tongue-shaped. Above the latter tower two sister coins of ready material the shigadoin to which a tail hangs. Presently we fell into and ascended the great wadi Afar which begins in the Hizmar or red region east of the double coast range

After receiving a network of secondary valleys that enable it to flow a torrent, as in France, every 10 to 12 years, it falls into the Minet-al-Aïenat, a little port for native craft which will presently be visited. We left this wadi at a bend some 200 meters wide called the Broad of Djoujoub, from one of the splendid secular trees that characterize North Midian. Near the camping ground we shall find another veteran, Ziziphius, whose three huge stems, springing from a single base, argue a green old age,

Here, both banks of the Fjormarra are lined with courses of rough stone, mostly rounded and rolled boulders, evidently the ruins of the water conduits which served to feed the rich growth of the lower Affal. The vegetation of the Gorge Mouth developed itself to dates and dorms, tamarisks and salsolese, out of which scuttled a troop of startled gazelles. We turned the right-hand jam of the gate and found ourselves at the water and camping ground of Mare Schwebe.

The general appearance of the station basin is novel, characteristic and not without its charms, especially when the sunset paints the plain with the red red gold and washes every barren peak with the tenderest, loveliest rosy pink. Under an intensely clear sapphire-coloured sky rises a distant rim of broken and chocolate-coloured trap hills set off by pale hillocks and white flats of gypsum, here and there crystallised by contact with the platonics.

The formation mostly stands up either in stiff cones or in long spines and ridges whose perpendicular wall-like crests are impossible to climb. The snowy cliffs rest upon shoulders disposed at the angle of rest and the prevailing dull drab yellow of the base is mottled only where accidental fractures or fall exposes the glittering salt-like interior.

The gashes in the flank made by wind and rain disclose the core, grey granite or sandstone coloured by manganese. The greater part of the old city was built of this alabaster-like material. When new, it must have been a scene in fairyland. Time has now degraded it to the appearance and consistence of crumbling salt. The coin-shaped hills of the foreground, all up-tilted and cliffing to the north, show the curious mauve and red tints of the many-coloured clays culled in the Brazil Tower.

even the palms are peculiar their tall upright crests of lively green fronds their dead brown hangings and their trunks charred black by the careless badawi form a quaint contrast with the genteel nattily dressed and cognified brooms of egypt and hejaz and that grandeur may not be wanting to the view on the east rise the peaks and pinnacles of the armoured mountain jebel al-luas whilst northwards the jebel al-zana a huge dome forms the horizon

This place, evidently the capital of Madianpropa, is that which Ptolemy 6-7 places amongst his Messagian towns in northern latitude 28 degrees 15 minutes, and it deserves more than the two pages of description which Ruppel bestowed upon it. We will notice its natural features before proceeding to the remains of man. Here, the Wadi Afar takes the name of El Barda. Sweeping from west to east, it is deflected to a north-south line, roughly speaking, by the gate of Shigdawayan, twin hills standing nearly east and west of one another.

now become a broad well-defined tree-dotted bed with stiff silt banks here and there twenty to twenty-five feet high it runs on a meridian for about a mile including the palm orchard and the camping ground it then turns the west end of the jebel el safra a mass of gypsum on the left bank and it bends to the east of south having thus formed a figure of z

After escaping from the imprisoning hills, the Fjormar bed, now about three quarters of a mile broad, is bisected longitudinally by a long and broken lump of cleritic or serpentine sandstone and rises in steps towards the right bank upon which the pilgrims camp. Reaching the plain, the wadi flies out wildly, containing a number of riverine islands, temporary but sometimes of considerable size. It retains sufficient moisture to support a clump of palms, that which we saw from afar. It bends to the southeast and lastly it trends seaward.

The water of Bada springs from the base of the hill El Safra, oozing out in trickling veins bedded in soft, dark mud. It can be greatly increased by opening the fountains and economised by a roofing of mat. We tried this plan, which only surprised the unready Arab. After swinging to the left bank and running for a few yards, it sinks in the sand, yet on both sides there are signs of labour, showing that even of late years, the valley has seen better days.

long leets and watercourses have been cut in the clay and are still lined with the white-flowered rijla whose nutritive green leaf is eaten raw or boiled by the falas of egypt the wild growth however is mostly bitter

On both sides are little square plots fenced against sheep and goats by a rude abattis of stripped and dead boughs, jujube and acacia. Young dates have been planted in pits, some are burnt and others are torn, for the badawi, mischievous and destructive as the cyanocephalus, will neither work nor allow others to work. The ushash, or frond and reed huts much like huge birds' nests, are scattered about in small groups everywhere except near the water. Wherever a collection of bones shows a hyena's lair, the hunters have built a screen of dry stone.

In fact, Mahe Shoaib was spoken of as an Arab "happy valley" but its owners, the Masa'id, a spiritless tribe numbering about 70 tents, are protégés of the Tagaygad. This Hawaiti clan is on bad terms with Khazir and Brahim bin Maqbool and the brother sheikhs of the Imran, recognised by the Egyptian government, claim the land where they have only the right of transit.

Badawi clans and sub-tribes always combine against stranger families but when there is no foreign war they amuse themselves with pilling and plundering, sabring and shooting one another. I believe that the palms were roasted to death by the Imran although the sheikhs assured me that the damage was done this year by Kailas Masudi when cooking his food. The tribe appears to be Egypto-Arab like the Huaytatt and the Ma'aza having congeners at Qaza or Gaze and at Raza al-Awadi near Egyptian Tell al-Kabir.

Consequently, Rubal is in error when he suspects that the Musaiti are in Judin-Stam. The unfortunates fled towards the sea and left the valley desolate about seven months ago. Their Sheikh is dead and a certain Agil bin Mohsin, a greedy, foolish kind of fellow mentioned during my first journey, aspires to the dignity and the profit of chieftainship. He worried me till I named a dog after him and then he disappeared.

The ruins, of large extent from North Midian and equal to those of all the towns we have seen put together, begin with the palm orchard on the left bank. The Jebel al-Safra shows the foundations of what may have been the arks. It is a double coin, the taller to the south, the lower to the north, and both bluff in the latter direction.

The dip is about 45 degrees. The upper parts of the dorsa are scatters of white on brown yellowstone and below it where the surface has given way appear mauve coloured strata as if stained by manganese. Viewed in profile from the west the site of Al Muttali as the Arabs call the hot wheel becomes a tall up-tilted wedge continued northwards by the smaller feature and backed by a long skyline a high ridge of plaster pale coloured with glittering points.

the isolated yellow hill a horse in icelandic parlance rising about two hundred feet above the valley seoul is separated by a deep narrow gorge from the adjacent eastern range the slopes now water-torn and jagged may formerly have declined in regular lines and evidently all were built over to the crest like those of the syrian

The foundations of walls and rock-cut steps are still found even on the far side of the eastern feature. The knifeback is covered with the foundations of what appears to be a fortified Laura or palace, a straight street running north-south with five degrees west magnetic. It serves as base for walls, one meter and a half thick, opening it up like rooms. Of these, we counted 20 on either side. At the northern end of the horse, which, like the southern, has been weathered to a mere spur, is a work composed of two semicircles fronting to the north and east.

A bastion of well-built wall in three straight lines overhangs the perpendicular face of the eastern gorge. In two places there are signs of a similar defence to the south, but time and weather have eaten most of it away. The ground sounds hollow and the feet sink in the crumbling heaps. Evidently the whole building was of ragam or gypsum and in the process of decay it has become white as blocks of ice, here and there powdered with snow.

On the narrow flat ledge between the western base of this Safra and the eastern side of the Barda valley lie masses of ruins now become mere rubbish. Bits of wool built with cut stone and water conduits of fine mortar containing, like that of the pyramids, powdered brick and sometimes pebbles. We carried off a lump of sandstone bearing unintelligible marks possibly intended for a man and a beast. We called it Saint George and the Dragon but the former is afoot, possibly the Bedouin stole his steed.

There was a frustum or column drum of fine white marble hollowed to act as a mortar like the Muslim headstone of the same material. It is attributed to the Jabal al-Lawuz where ancient quarries are talked of. There were also makraqa rubstones or close-grained red cyanite and fragments of the basalt hand mills used for quartz grinding. Part of a mortar was found made of exceedingly light and porous lava.

southeast of the hutville falls in the now rugged ravine khashem el mutali snout of the high town it leads to the apex of the coralline formations scattered over with fragments of gypsum here amorphous there crystalline or talc-like and all dazzling white as powdered sugar signs of tent foundations and of buildings appear in impossible places and the heights bear two burge or watch towers one visible afar and one dominating from its mamelon on the whole land

The return to the main valley descends by another narrow gorge further to the southeast called Shab el-Darak or Straight of the Shield. The tall perpendicular and overhanging walls apparently threatening to fall would act testudo to an Indian file of warriors. High up the right bank of this gut we saw a tree trunk propped against a rock by way of a ladder for the treasure seeker.

The shab-soul is flat with occasional steps and overfalls of rock polished like mirror by the rain torrents. The mouth shows remains of a masonry dam some 14 feet thick by 21 long and immediately below it are the bases of buildings and watercourses.

Walking down the left bank of the Great Wadi and between these secondary gorges that drain the Yellow Hill we came upon a dwarf mound of dark earth and rubbish. This is the Siarra, Mint and Smith's Quarter, a place always to be sought as Balbac and Palmyra taught me. Remains of tall furnaces now level with the ground were scattered about and Mr Clark, long trained to find antiques, brought back the first coins picked up in ancient Midian.

The total gathered here and in other parts of Marais-Chureb was 258, of which some 200 were carried home untouched. The rest, treated with chloritic and other acids, came out well. One was a silver oval, which may or may not have been a token. Eleven were thick discs, differing from the normal type. Unfortunately, the legends are illegible.

the rest in form bits of green stuff copper and bronze were glued together by decay and apparently eaten out of all semblance of money until the verdigris of ages is removed all are cast like the roman as before b c two and seven and some show the tale

The distinguishing feature is the human eye, not the outer of Horus so well known to those who know the pyramids, but the last traith of Athene's profile. Two of Roman, a Nerva with SC on the reverse and a Claudius Augustus bearing by way of a countermark a depressed oblong of 20/100 by 14/100 of an inch with a raised figure erect, draped and holding a sceptre or thyrsus. There is also a Constantius struck at Antioch,

The gem of the little collection was a copper coin thinly encrusted with silver proving that even in those days the Midianites produced smashes. Similarly the Egyptian miners did the Pharaoh by inserting lead into hollowed gold.

The obverse shows the owl in low relief, an animal rude as any counterfeit presentment of the ever found in Troy. It has the normal olive branch but without the terminating crescent which however is not invariably present on the proper right while the left shows a poor imitation of the legend N.H. The silvering of the reverse has been so corroded that no signs of the goddess's galliated head are visible. My friend,

Mr W. E. Haynes of the Numismatic Society came to the conclusion that it is a barbaric Midianitish imitation of the Greek tetradrachm which in those days had universal currency like the shilling and the franc the curious bits of metal which also bear the owl may add to our knowledge of the Nabataean coins first described I believe by the learner Duke de Loines

Another interesting find was a flat-bottomed, thick-walled clay crucible of small size, 2 and 10 sixteenths of an inch high by 2 and 4 sixteenths of an inch across the mouth, exactly resembling the article picked up at Hammamat. The latter, however, contains a remnant of letharge, possibly showing that the old Egyptians worked the silver which may have been supplied by the Colorado courts.

I would here crave leave to make a short excursus to the ancient affairs of Egypt proper, where we are told by an inscription in the treasury of Ramesses the Great, 14 centuries before Christ, the gold and silver mines yielded per annum a total of 32 million minai, equals 90 million pounds. Dr. H. Bruchbe first drew attention to Hammamat where, as he had learned from Diodorus, 1.49 to 3.12, and from the papyri, the precious metals have been extensively worked.

The wells of Hammamat lie between the Kene on the Nile and the Kosir on the Red Sea, and the land is held by the Ababdar Arabs, who have taken charge from time immemorial of the rich commercial caravans. The formation of the country much resembles that of Midian, and the metalliferous veins run from northeast to southwest.

In Arabia, however, the fions are of unusual size. In Africa, they are small, the terminating fibrils, as it were, of the Asiatic focus, while the Dark Continent lacks the wealth of iron which characterises the opposite coast.

By the courtesy of General Stone and Purdy I was enabled after return to Cairo in May 1878 to inspect the collection. Admirably arranged in order of place and poor as well disposed it is nevertheless useful to students and it was most interesting to us. The only novelty is asbestos produced in the schist

The raw material is now imported by the United States and used for a variety of purposes. It is said to exist in Mount Sinai, we found none in Midian where the schist formations are of great extent, probably because we did not look for it. The collection was made by Colonel Colston and Mr L.H. Mitchell, a mining engineer attached to the Egyptian staff, spent several weeks spalling sundry tons of quartz. After finding a speck of gold, the work was considered to be done.

General Stone, however, sensibly deprecated any attempts to exploit the minerals. The country lacks wood and water, and the expense of camel transport from Hammamat to Husser, and thence into ships to sewers, would swallow up all the profits. That Egypt was immensely rich in old days we know from several sources.

Appian tells us that the treasury of Ptolemy Philadelphus contained 740,000 talents and assuming with Ebers, the Egyptian at half the age of Netean, we have the marvellous sum of 83,250,000 pounds. According to Diodorus 162, the treasury of Ramsenit concerning which Herodotus 2.121 and 1.2.2 heard a funny story from his interpreter contained 4 million talents equal to at least 450 million pounds.

This rich king's treasure house has been found portrayed in the far-famed temple of Medinat Habu. The mass of wealth, gold, silver, copper and spices is enormous and while the baser metals are in bars, the precious are stored in heaps, sacks and vases. The gold mines of the old Coptis plain, the modern Copt south of Cannae, are preserved to all time by the earliest known map.

it has survived while those of the milesian anaximander b c sixteen to five forty seven of hecateus also from miletus and called the father of geography and of ptolemy the pelusian are irretrievably lost

A papyrus in the Turin Museum contains a plan of the mineral region spoken of in two stili, those of Rhodesia and Kuban, describing the supply of drinking water introduced into the desert between Kuban and the Red Sea. Chabas has published a coloured facsimile of this map. The gold-containing mountains are tinted red and the words Tu en Nub, Mons Audius, are written over them in hieratics.

The only modern gold workings of Egypt are in the Mudiriat Nomos of Famarka, the frontier town better known as Faizoglu from its adjacent heights. The washings were visited lately, March 1878, by my enterprising friend Dr P. Matucci and Mr Ghesi. In old days this local Kayan had a very bad name. Convicts were deported here with a frightful mortality. It is still a station for galley slaves and it has a considerable garrison but we no longer hear of abnormal fatality.

the surface was much turned over by the compulsory miners and the european geologists and experts were sent to superintend them at last the diggings did not pay and were abandoned but the natives do by rule of thumb despite their ignorance of mineralogy without study of the ground and lacking coordination of labour what the government fail to do

they have not struck the chief vein if any exists but during the heavy rains of the kharif or autumn in the valley of the tumat river herds of slaves are sent yearly to wash gold and they find sufficient to supply the only known coin bars or ingots beyond the sirgha the left bank is gashed by the ravines draining the southeastern prolongation of the yellow hill

Water cuts through this rotten formation of rubbish like a knife into cheese, forming deep chasms, here narrow, there broad, with walls built up as it were of fragments and ready to be levelled by the first rains. The lines of streets and the outlines of tenements can be dimly traced, while revetments of rounded boulders show artificial watercourses and defences against the now dried-up stream. The breadth of this, the eastern settlement, varies with the extent of the ledge between the gypsum hills and the sandy wadi. The length may be a kilometre.

The best preserved traces of crowded building end with the southeastern spur of the Jebel al-Safra. Beyond them is a huge cemetery. The ancient graves are pits in the ground, a few still uncovered, the many yawning wide, and all of them ignoring orientation. Those are the moderns on the contrary, front towards Mecca. The Bedouin of this country seem ever to prefer for their last homes the most ancient sites.

They place the body in a pit, covered with a large slab or a heap of stones, but they never fill in the hollow, as is usual among Muslims with earth. The arrangements suit equally well the hyena and the skull collector, and thus I was able to make a fair collection of Badawi craniae.

At the southeastern end of the outliers, projected by the Egebel el Safra, where a gentle slope of red earth falls towards the valley bank, is the only group of building of which any part is still standing. The site may be old but the present ruins are distinctly medieval, dating probably from the days of the Egyptian Mamluk sultans. Beginning from below and to the southwest is a horse or cistern measuring 26 by 19.5 meters with a depth of 9 to 10 feet.

the material is cut sandstone cemented outside with mortar containing the normal brick crumbs and pebbles and inside mixed with mud at the northeastern and southwestern corners are retaining buttresses in two steps exactly like those in the inland fort of ullowedge at the two other angles are flights of stairs and the sole is a sheet of dried silt

To the south-east lies the remnants of a small circular furnace and on the north-north-east a broken wall shows where stood the Betal Sagir, or smaller reservoir. A narrow conduit of cut stone leads with elaborate zig-zags towards two sagir, or draw wells, hollowed in the gypsum. The southern, an oval of 5 metres 10 centimetres, is much dilapidated and its crumbling throat is spanned by a worn-out arch of the surrounding secondary rock.

Close to the northwest is the other, riveted with cut stone and measures six meters in diameter. It is an elaborate affair with a pointed arch and a regular keystone, circular sedad or walls for supporting the hauling apparatus and minor reservoirs numbering three. On a detached hillock a few paces to the north stands a fort which defended the establishment.

The short walls of the parallelogram measured 15 meters 40 centimeters and the long 18 meters 60 centimeters. The gate, choked by ruins, leads to a small hall with a masked entrance opening to the right. There is an hour room under the stone steps to the west and two others occupy the eastern side. This fort is to be restored for the better protection of pilgrims and shortly after our departure an Egyptian engineer, Suleiman Effendi, came from Suez to inspect and report upon it.

according to local modern tradition this scatter of masonry was the original site of the settlement called after the builder bil al saydani the well of saydan for watering each caravan the proprietor demanded a camel by way of

At last a magribi, that is, a magician, refused to part, betook himself to the present camping ground, sank pits, and let loose the copious springs. The old wells then dried up, and the new sources give to the section of the great Wadi al-Fal its actual name, Wadi al-Bada, of the innovation, so hateful to the conservative savage. Hence Rupel's Beden, which would mean an Ibex.

on the opposite or right bank of the broad and sandy bed the traces of ancient buildings extend to a far greater distance at least to two kilometres there have been a continuous line of forts cisterns and tenements still marked out by the bases of long thick walls the material is mostly gypsum leprous white as the skin of gahazi but here and indeed generally throughout midian the furious torrents uncontrolled during long ages by the hand of man have swept large gaps in the masses of homesteads and public buildings

Again, the ruins of this section are distributable into two kinds, the city of the living and the city of the dead.

The former, of considerable extent, hugs the watercourse and crowns all the natural spurs that buttress the bed. Beginning from the north lie two blocks of building considerable in extent. The southern, called by the Arabs 'al-Malka', is a broken parallelogram. Further downstream the bank is a vast strew of broken pottery and one place covered with glass fragments was named by our soldiers 'al-Khamara', the tavern or the hotel.

As in ancient Etruria, so here the people assemble after heavy rains to pick up what luck throws in the way. It is said that they often gather gold pieces, square as well as round, bearing by way of inscription prayers to the Apostle of Allah. Some of us, however, had a shrewd suspicion that the tibur, or pure gold dust, is still washed from the sands and cast probably in rude moulds.

Behind, in the door westward of this southern town, lies the city of the dead. Unlike the pitted graveyard to the northeast, the cemetery is wholly composed of catacombs, which the Bedouin called maghre, or caves, or biban, doors.

The

the catacombs fronting in all directions because the makers were guided by convenience not by ceremonial rule are hollowed in the soft new sandstone underlying the snowy gypsum and most of the faades show one or more horizontal lines of natural beadwork rolled pebbles disposed parallelly by the natural action of water

in the most ruinous the upper layer is a cornice of hard sandstone stained yellow with iron and much creviced the base a soft conglomerate of the same material is easily corroded and the supernal part caves in upon the principal which is destroying niagara at each side of the doorways is a mastabach stone bench also rock hewn and with triple steps

The dogeons, which have hollowings for hinges and holes for bars, are much worn and often broken. They're rarely inclined inwards after the fashion of Egypt. A few have windows, or rather portholes, flanking the single entrance. The peculiarities and the rare ornaments will be noticed when describing each receptacle taken as a whole. They're evidently rude and barbarous forms of the artistic catacombs and tower tombs that characterise Petra and Palmyra.

the maghre may roughly be divided into four topical groups these are the northern outliers the tomb of the kings so called by ourselves because they distinguish themselves from all the others the buttressed caves two sets and the southern outliers

The first mentioned begin with a ruin on the right jaw of the Kharek Gorge. It is dug in strata, dipping, as usual, from north-west to south-east. It faces eastwards and the entrance declines to the south. All external appearance of a catacomb has disappeared. A rude porch, a frame of sticks and boughs, like the thatched eaves of a Bulgarian hut, stands outside, while inside signs of occupation appear in hearths and goat dung in smoky roof and in rubbish-strewn floor.

Over another ruin to the west, a graffiti, of which copies from squeezes and photographs are here given, there are two loculae in the southern wall and in the southeastern corner is a pit also sunk for a sarcophagus. A hillside to the south of this cave shows another dug in the ta'ua or coloured sandstone and apparently unfinished. Part of it is sanded up and its only yield, an Egyptian oil jar of modern make, probably belonged to some pilgrim.

Crossing the second dwarf gorge we find on the right bank a third large ruin of at least 14 loculae. The hard upper reef, dipping at an angle of 30 degrees and striking from north-west to south-east, fell in when the soft base was washed away by weather and the anatomy of the graves is completely laid bare. Higher up the same wadi is a fourth maghara also broken down. The stucco coating still shows remnants of red paints and two characters, possibly Arab wasm or drive marks, are cut into an upright entrance stone.

The precipitous left bank of the third gorge contains the three finest specimens which deserve to be entitled the Tombs of the Kings. Of these, the two-facing eastward are figured by Ruppel, page 220, in the antiquated style of his day, with fanciful foreground and background. His sketch also places solid rock where the third and very dilapidated catacomb of this group, disposed at right angles, fronts southwards. Possibly the facades may once have been stuccoed and coloured. Now they show the bare and pebble-banded sandstone.

The southernmost, which may be assumed as the type, has an upright door flanked by a stone bench of three steps. Over the entrance is a defaced ornament which may have been the bust of a man. In Ruppel it is a kind of geometrical design. The frontage has two parallel horizontal lines raised to represent cornices.

Each bears a decoration resembling cronals or oriental ramparts broken into three steps. The lower set numbers eight, including the half ornaments at the corners and the higher seven. The interior is a mixture of upright recesses, probably intended for the gods or demons, and of horizontal loculi whose grooves show that they had lids.

there is no cemetery in the niches in the sarcophagi or in the paths and passages threading the graves the disposition will best be understood from the ground plans drawn by the young egyptian officers the sketches of the facades are too careless and incorrect for use but the want is supplied by the photographs of monsieur le

above these three tombs of the kings are many rock cavities which may or may not have been sepulchral time has done his worst with them we mount to the background of a coin-shaped hill by a well-trodden path leading to the remnants of a rude burge or watch-tower and to a semicircle of drywall garnished with a few sticks for hanging rags and tatters

the latter denotes the muslat sho'eb or praying place of prophet jethro and here our saeed and our sheikh took the opportunity for applying for temporal and eternal blessings the height at the edge of the precipice which cliffing to the north showed a view of our camp and of yubu and shushu islands was in round numbers four hundred and fifty feet

From this vantage ground we could distinctly trace the line of the Wadi Makna, beginning in a round basin at the western foot of the northern Shiget mountain and its sub-range, while low rolling hills along which we were to travel separated it from the Wadi Badr or Afal to the south.

Two other important sets of catacombs, which I will call the buttressed caves, are pierced in the right flank of the same gorge at the base of a little conical hill, quaintly capped with a finial of weathered rock. The material is the normal, salacious gravel grit traversed and cloisonné by dikes of hard as stone. Beginning at the south, we find a range of three facing eastward and separated from one another by flying buttresses of natural rock.

Number 1 has a window as well as a door. Next to it is a square with six open loculi ranged from north to south. Number 3 shows a peculiarity, two small pilasters of the rudest Query Egyptian Doric. The only sign of ornamentation found inside the tombs, a small brick in the southwestern wall connects it with the northmost loculus of number 2.

Furthest north are three bevel holes noting the beginning of a catacomb and round the northern flank of the detached cone are six separate caves all laid waste by the furious northern gales.

The second set is carved in the bluff eastern end of an adjoining reef that runs away from the wadi. It consists of false sepulchres with the normal buttresses. They somewhat resemble those of the kings but there are various differences. Number two from the south is flanked by pilasters with ram's horn capitals, barbarous forms of ionic connected by three sets of triglyphs. The pavement is of slabs, there is an inner niche and one of the corners has apparently been used as an oven.

On a higher plane lies a sunken tomb with a deep drop and footholds by way of a ladder. Outside it, the rocky platform is hollowed, apparently for graves. The other three facades bear the cronell ornaments. The two to the north show double lines of seven holes drilled deep into the plane surface above the door, as if a casing had been nailed on, while the northernmost yield a fragmentary inscription on the southern wall. These are doubtless the inscribed tablets on which the names of kings are engraved.

alluded to in the jihān nūma of Ḥajjī Ḥaḥīfah. Rounding the reef to the north, we found three catacombs in the worst condition. One of them showed holes drilled in the façade. The southern outliers lie far down the Wadi al-Fāl, facing east, and hewn in the left flank of a dwarf gully which falls into the right bank not far from the site called by our men the Tavern.

The group number is three, all cut in the normal sandstone with the harder dikes which here stand up like ears. The principal item is the upper cave, small, square and apparently still used by the Arabs. In the middle of the lintel is a lump looking like the mutilated capital of a column. The two lower caves show only traces.

There is a tradition that some years ago a frank Quiri Rupal, after removing his Arab guides, dug into the tombs and found nothing but human hair. Several of the horizontal oculi contain the bones of men and beasts. I did not disturb them, as all appeared to be modern. The floors sounding hollow give my companions hopes of fines, but I had learned after many a disappointment how carefully the Badawi ransack such places.

we dug into four sepulchres including the sunken catacomb and the southern inscribed tomb usually six inches of flooring led to the ground rock in the sarcophagi about eight inches of tamped earth was based upon nine feet of sand that ended at the bottom

The only results were mouldering bones, bits of marble and pottery and dry seeds of the Caft Mariam, the rose of Jericho Anastatica which here feeds the partridges and which in Egypt supplies children with medicine and expectant mothers with a charm. As the plant is bibulous, opening to water and even to the breath, it is placed by the couch and its movement shows what is to happen. The cave also yielded specimens of bats, Rhinopoma macrophyllum, with fat at the root of their spiky tails.

I have described at considerable length this ruined Madiyama, which is evidently the capital of Madian proper, ranking after Petra. In one point it is still what it was, a chief station upon the highway, then Nabati, now Muslim, which led to the Ghaw or Wadi al-Arabah. But in all others, how changed? The traveller shall come. He that saw me in my beauty shall come. His eyes shall search the field. They shall not find me. End of section 4

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CHAPTER IV NOTICES OF PRECIOUS METALS IN MIDIAN THE PAPYRIE AND MEDIEVAL ARAB GEOGRAPHERS

In my volume on The Gold Mines of Midian, the popular Hebrew sources of information, the Old Testament and the Talmud, were ransacked for the benefit of the reader. It now remains to consult the Egyptian papyri and the pages of the medieval Arab geographers. Extracts from the latter were made for me in my absence from England by the well-known Arabist, the Reverend G. Percy Badger. I will begin with the beginning.

Dr. Heinrich Busch-Bey, whose History of Egypt is the latest and best gift to Egyptologists, kindly drew my attention to an interesting passage in his work and was good enough to copy for me the source of his information, Tile Harris Papyrus No. 1 in the British Museum. The first king of the 20th dynasty born about BC 1200 and residing at Thebes was Ramesses III, whose title Ramosu Panuta or Nuti, Ramesses the God, became in the hands of the Greeks Ramsinatos.

This great prince, ascending the throne in evil days, applied himself at once to the internal and external economy of his realm. He restored the caste divisions and carried fire and sword into the land of his enemies. He transported many captives to Egypt, fortified his eastern frontier, and built in the Gulf of Suez a fleet of large and small ships in order to traffic with Pun and the Holy Land and to open communication with the incense country and with the wealthy shores of the Indian Ocean.

not less important says our author page five nine four for egypt which required before all things the copper applied to every branch of her industry was the sending of commissioners by land on donkeyback and by sea to explore and exploit the rich cupriferous deposits of arthaca query in the name of the ackbar gulf

this metal with a glance of gold was there cast in brick shape and was transported by sea to the capital the king also restored his attention to the treasures of the syenitic peninsula which had excited the concupiscence of the egyptians since the days of king sonafaru b c three thousand seven hundred

Loaded with rich presents for the sanctuary of the goddess Hathor, the protectoress of Mafka land, chosen employé were dispatched on a royal commission to the peninsula for the purpose of supplying the pharaoh's treasury with the highly prized blue-green copper stones Mafka Quiri Turkisen. These lines were published by Dr. Bruch Bay before he had heard of my discovery of metals and of a modern turquoise digging in the land of Midian.

He had decided that Arthaka lay to the east of Suez, chiefly from the insistence laid upon the shipping. Seagoring craft would certainly not be required for a sail of three or four hours. Moreover, as I have elsewhere shown, Jebel Attaqa, the mountain of deliverance at the mouth of Wadi Musa, was referred to the Jews at some time after the Christian era and probably during the 4th and 5th centuries, when pilgrimages to the apocryphal Mount Sinai became the fashion.

During the summer of 1877, Dr. Bruch Bay was kind enough to copy and to translate the original document upon which he founded his short account of the Othaka copper mines. I offer it to the reader in full.

The order of the alphabet is that adopted by Dr. Bruchbe. It relies for the first letter upon the authority of Plutarch, who asserts that the Egyptian abecedarium numbered the square of five twenty-five, and that it opened with word, which also expresses the god Thoth. This is the case of the symbol, the leaf of some water plant. The sequence of the letters has been suggested by a number of minor considerations. We begin with the vowels, and proceed to the libeal, the liquids, and so forth.

The sense of the highly interesting inscription in its English order would be, I have sent my commissioners to the land of Tharka, to the great mines of copper which are in this place, and their ships were loaded carrying them, while others marched on their asses. No, one never had heard since the days of the olden kings that these mines had been found. The loads carried copper, the loads were by myriad for their ships, which went thence to Egypt.

After happily arriving, the lids were landed according to royal order under the pavilion in form of copper bricks. There were numerous as frogs in the marsh, and in quality they were gold of the third degree. I made them admired by all the world as marvellous things. The following lines upon the subject of Midian are

are from the notes, page 143, of Jacob Gullius in Al-Fajenam, Amsterdam, 1669. A valuable translation with geographical explanations, Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Kathir al-Farghani derived his Lakab, or Khodgnaman, from the province of Fargan, Khokhand, to the northeast of the Oxus. He wrote a work upon astronomy, and he flourished about AH 184 or AD 800.

ibedem madian, median, sive median, antiqui nomenis opidum in maris rubri litore, sub un de tregenta degres gradus latitudine, ad ortum brumalem deflectens a montis sinae extremitate, ubi fere site Ptolemaii Modiana, haud dubiae iadum cum median.

a geograforum orientalium qui bustam ad aiguptum reifertur, a praerisque, ominos ad hegiazam quod merito et erectae factum. Nullus inam est, qui arabibus non annumeret Marianitas, et sinam, quae Marianae Borealiur, montum Arabiae facet de paros Galatas quator.

midien autem fuit abrahamie ex caethura filius unde tribus illa et ab hac urbs nomen habent quam quidem tribum coaluise seribus ut puto et affinitate in unum com ismaelitas in nuere videntur geneseos verba

For the conspiring men in Joseph's exile, the brothers, it is said, came to Ismela, through the city of Midian, and were seen by Ismela themselves. And they have a city called Midian, which is called Madinat-Kush in the Quran.

In the same way, they are the same as Jethro, the son of three, who led Moses his son Sipphor to the land of Midian, where Jethro was the chief and priest, and who was known to the Arabs as Hanuk, and Nuuk.

abraham el kalil rex saul talut ccetada licet iorondum propria etiam usurpintur nomina et in ipsis sacris libris non uno nomine hic iethro

loci ilius putium scriptores memorant fano circum extructo ala bibus sacram persuasis mosem ibi siporum et sorores al pastorum in iurdiis vindicase

"Exodus 2" is described as follows: "But first Muhammad said to the king of the universe, who was in ruins, 'The city was destroyed.'

Al-Farghani is followed by the Imam Abu Abbas Ahmed bin Yahya bin Jabir, surnamed and popularly known as Al-Balazuri, who flourished between age 232 and 247, or AD 846 to 861, and wrote the Foto al-Budan, or the Conquests of Countries. His words are, page 13-14, Monsieur J. de Georges' edition, Lugduni, Batavorum, 1866.

It was related to me by Abu Abid al-Qasim bin Salam, who said he was told by Ishaq bin Isa from Malik ibn Anas and from Rabiat, who heard from a number of the learned that the Apostle of Allah, upon whom be peace, gave in fiyof ikhta'at to Bilal bin al-Harith al-Muzni, mines Ma'adin, i.e. of gold, in the district of Vuru, variant Kuru.

Moreover, it was related to me by Amru al-Nakid and by Ibn Sahm al-Antaqi of Antioch, who both declared to have heard from Al-Haytham bin Jamil al-Antaqi through Hamad bin Salma that Abu Makin through Abu Ikrimya Mawla bin al-Haris al-Muzni had heard the Apostle of Allah, upon whom be peace, enfioved the said Bilal with a bit of ground containing a mountain and a gold mine.

that the sons of Bilal sold part of the grant to one Umar bin Abd al-Aziz when a gold mine or according to others two gold mines were found in it that they said to the buyer verily we sold to thee land for cultivation and we did not sell thee gold mining ground

that they brought the letter of the apostle upon whom be peace in a bound volume the dumas kissed it and rubbed it upon his eyes and said of the truth let me see what hath come out of it the mine and what i have laid out upon it then he deducted from them the expenses of working and returned to them the surplus

and I was told by Musab el-Zubayri from Malik ibn Anas that the Apostle of Allah, upon whom be peace, gave in fief to Bilal bin Harith's mines in the district of Fara. There is no difference of opinion among a learned man on this subject, nor do I know of any of our companions who contradicts the statement that the gold mine paid one-fourth per ten, equals two and a half percent, royalty to the Beit al-Mal, or public treasury."

Musab further relates from al-Zahri that the gold mine deferred the zakat or poor rate. He also said that the proportion was one-fifth, two percent, like that which the people of al-Iraq, Mesopotamia, take to this day from the gold mines of al-Farar and from Najran and of Zulmawa and of Wadi al-Quru and others. Moreover, the fifth is also mentioned by Safin al-Tawri and by Abu Hanifa and Abu Yusuf, as well as by the people of al-Iraq.

Follows on my list the celebrated Muruj al-Tahab, or Maids of Gold, by al-Masudi, who died in AH 346 or AD 957, and whose book extends to AH 332 or AD 943. Unable to find the translation of my friend Springer, I am compelled to quote from Masudi le Préredo, text...

et traduction par C. Barbier de Menard et Pavé de Cotillet, Société Asiatique Paris, 1864, volume 3, pages 301 to 305.

theologians do not agree with the question of knowing to which people belonged shuaib shuaib son of nawil son of ravahil son of mur son of anka son of madian son of abraham the friend of god although he is certain that his tongue was arabic

Some think that he belonged to the extinct Arab races, to the nations that have disappeared, to some of these past generations we have spoken of. According to others, it would be here the descendants of El-Mate, son of Jandal, son of Yasop, son of Madian, son of Abraham, whose Shuaib was brother by birth.

of this race came out a great number of kings who had dispersed into contiguous kingdoms one after the other or separated among these kings we must distinguish those who were named abujet hawass huti kalamun safas and kurisha all as we have just said sons of elmat sons of djandal

the letters of the alphabet are represented precisely by the names of these kings where we find the twenty-four letters on which the budget runs there has been said much more about these letters as we have seen in this book but it does not enter our subject to report here all the contradictory systems imagined to explain the meaning of the letters

Abudjet was king of Mecca and the part of the Idjas that confines it. Awaz and Wuti ruled together in the country of Wedj , which is the territory of Taif and the portion of an Idjid that is his contiguity. Calamun exercised suzerainty over the kingdom of Madian. There are even authors who think that his authority spread together on all the princes and countries that we have just named.

the punishment of the day of the cloud had taken place under the reign of calamun shoahib calling his impis to penance they treated him as a

then he threatened them with the punishment of the day of the night and after that a door of the fire of the sky was opened on them so he withdrew with those who had believed in the place known as del haika which is a foray in the direction of madian

cependant lorsque les incrédules sentirent les effets de la vengeance céleste et que consumés par une chaleur terrible ils comprirent enfin la vérité ils se mirent à la recherche de schoiep et de ceux qui avaient cru en lui ils les trouvèrent abrités sous un nuage blanc doucement rafraîchi par des éphires et ne ressentant en rien les atteintes de la douleur

they chased them out of this asylum imagining that they would find a refuge against the plague that was pursuing them but god changed this cloud into a fire that rushed down on their heads montasir son of elmundir elmelini spoke of this people and wept his sad fate in the verses where he says

the kings of the children of uti and safas who lived in opulence and those of awas who possessed palaces and sensuous apartments reigned over the land of hedjas and their beauty resembled that of the rays of the sun or the light of the moon they inhabited the premises of the holy house they sweetened the meurs of their compatriots and ruled with illustration and honor

nothing more curious than the story of these kings, the story of their wars, of their acts, of the way they took possession of these lands and established their domination after exterminating the first possessors. These were the peoples we talked about in our previous works. By dealing with this subject, we draw attention to this book on our first writings and we engage the reader to consult them.

The next in order of seniority is the well-known Idrisi AH 531 or AD 1136. Dr Badger's Arabic copy not being paged, he has forwarded to me extracts from the French translation by Monsieur P. Amélie Joubert, Paris 1836, having first compared them with the original.

Tome 1, page 5. De cette mer de la Chine dérive encore le golfe de Kulzum, Kulzum, qui commence à Bap el-Mandeb, au point où se termine la mer des Indes. Il s'étend au nord en inclinant un peu vers l'occident, en longeant les rivages occidentales de l'Yémen, le Tehama, l'Ejas, jusqu'au pays de Madian, Taïla, El-Aqaba et de Farran, et se termine à la ville de Kulzum, dont il tire son nom.

Page 142 Page 328 Page 333 Page 333

plus grande que tabouk tabouk et le puits où moïse sur qui soit le salut abreuva le troupeau de jetro el tchouaip on dit que ce puits est maintenant à sec je lis mou atila comme porte le manuscrit b et non mouadzama le son donné par le manuscrit a

et qu'on a élevé au-dessus une construction l'eau nécessaire aux habitants provient de source le nom de malian sikh dérive de celui de la tribu à laquelle jetro appartenait cette ville offre très peu de ressources et le commerce y est misérable

The following notice of Madian is taken from the Kitab al-Budan, or Book of Countries, by Ahmed ibn Abi Yaqub bin Wadhi, surnamed al-Yakubi and al-Khatib, the writer. According to the Arabic Colophon, it was completed on the morning of Saturday, Shawwal the 21st, AH 607, or AD 1210.

The author gives on page 129 T.G.J. Junibol Lugduni Batavorum 1861 a description of the route from Misr, Egypt, here Cairo, to Mecca. The first ten stages are 1. Jub el-Umeyra 2. El-Kerkirah variant Kerkirah

three adjud the well-known fort of the direct suez cairo line for jisrael kuzum where the gulf was crossed and lastly six desert marches marahil to ayla the latter station is described as a fine city upon the shore of the salt sea the meeting place of the pilgrim caravans from syria egypt and the maghreb or west africa

It has merchandise in plenty and its people are a mixed race, Ahlat min al-Nas. Here also are sold the fine cloaks called Berdu Habratin and also known as the bird of the Apostle of Allah, upon whom be peace. He resumes, and from Ela you march to Sharafal Bagal and from the latter to Madian, which is a large and populous city with abundant springs and far-flowing streams of wholesome water and gardens of flower beds. Its inhabitants are a mixed race, Ahlat min al-Nas. The

The traveller, making mecca from eila, takes the shore of the salt sea to a place called einuna, variant uian, plural of ein, an eye of water, a fountain. Here are buildings and pond clumps and seeking places, metalib, sea lane for the authorities, in which men search for gold. Dr. Badger draws my attention to the last sentence, which seems to have also been noticed by Spranger. Alt. Jog. Page 32.

The following is from the Kitabasa el-Bitad, or Book of the Geographical Traditions of Countries, by the far-famed Zakariya bin Muhammad bin Mahmoud, surnamed al-Kazwini, who died aged 653 or AD 1255.

Madian, page 173, edited F. Wostenfeld, Göttingen, 1848, is a city of the tribe Qom of Shueb, upon whom be peace. It was founded by Madian, son of Ibrahim, the friend of Vala, the grandfather of Shueb. It exports the merchandise of Tabuk between El Medina and El Sham, or Damascus.

In it is the well whence Musa, upon whom be peace, watered the flock of Shoaib, and it is said that the well is of great depth, and that over it is a building visited by pious men. This settlement, Madian, is subject to the district of Tiberias, and near it is the well, and at it a rock which Moses uprooted, and which remains there to the present day.

The Imam Abu'l-Abbas Ahmed ibn Ali Taqi al-Din, better known as al-Maqrizi, wrote his book al-Mawai's Wel Itibar Fi Zikri al-Khitat Wel Isar, The Admonition and Examples in Commemorating Habitations and Traditions in AH 825 or AD 1421, during the latter part of the Second Mamluk Dynasty, and he brings down the history to the reign of Ganzu Ghuri, whose fort we shall see at al-Aqaba.

He tells us, edition of Gottingen 1848, Sahifa 48, the loftiest mountain in Madjin is called Zuber,

It is also related that among the settlements of the Madianite tribe are the villages of Petraea, namely the Kurat or Circuit of Al-Tor, and Faran, Faran, and Rayyeh, and Kulzum, and Ela, Al-Akabar, with its surroundings, Madian, with its surroundings, and Awid, and Hora, Luke, Kome, with their surroundings, and Barda, and Shaghab,

He speaks of many ruined cities whose inhabitants had disappeared. Forty, however, remained, some with and others without names. Between al-Hijaz and Egypt, Syria, were 16 cities, 10 of them lying towards Palestine. The most important were al-Khalasa, with its idol temple destroyed by Muhammad, and al-Sanita, whose stones had been removed to build Gaza. The others were al-Madira, al-Muniyya, al-Awajj,

El-Chueyrek, El-Biryan, El-Main, El-Siba, and El-Mualak. The Marasit, El-Itila, El-Asma, El-Amkanat, El-Buqa.

observations of information on the names of places and countries which contains two dates in the body of the work vis AH 997 or AD 1589 and AH 1168 or AD 1755 which is probably compiled from El-Kazwini says Subbose Madian after giving the movement of the word it is a city of the tribe of Shweb opposite Tabuk and upon the sea of El-Kazum six stages Marahil separating the two

It is larger than Tabuk, and it is the well whence Moses watered the flocks of Shweb. Finally, it repeats that Madian is under the district of Tabria or Tiberias. Volume 3, page 64. Edited T.G.J. Junbol Lugdini Batavorum 1854. Eduobas, Cod MSS.

i conclude this unpopular chapter with some remarks by dr badger concerning the apparent connection of jethro and el medina it struck me when studying madian which is the name of the place as well as of a man that jathrib the ancient term of el medina might have served the same double purpose

At all events, it was singular to find a Yathrib somewhere near Madian, and that the word was not far removed from Yithro, the name given in Hebrew to Moses, Midianite father-in-law. I also note that the Septuagint renders the Hebrew Yithro by Peshito, by Yathron, which the New Arabic version of the Bible, published at Beirut or Syria, follows, making it Yathron. The name in Hebrew, Exodus 4.18, is also written Yether.

My theory is this. Firstly, there is no dependence to be placed on the Masoretic points, especially when affixed to names of places. Secondly, we have no certain knowledge of the language used by the Midianites in those ancient times. Their territory extended northwards towards Palestine, and from their intimate relations with the Israelites, as friends and as enemies, both nations appear to have understood each other perfectly. May not their language then have been a dialect of the Aramean?

If so, the Yithiru of the Bible might have been Yithirab, Yathrib, etc. Instants of the apocryphated B are common in the Chaldean or Syro-Chaldeic at the present, e.g. Yaheb-Allahah is pronounced Yahu-Allahah,

Yahshua, Yaheb becomes Yahshua, Yahu, etc. The final Beth be or the Heb being converted into a W. Hence, why may not Yithro have originally been Yithrab or Yathrib? Of course, this is only a conjecture of mine.

Mr E. Stanley Poole says that the Arabs dispute whether the name Median be foreign or Arabic and whether Median spoke Arabic. He considers the absurd enumeration of the alphabetical kings, El-Masudi quoted above, to be curious as possibly containing some vague reference to the language of Median.

When these kings are said contemporaneously to have ruled over Mecca, Western Nejd, Yemen, Median, Egypt, etc., it is extremely improbable that Midian ever penetrated into Yemen, notwithstanding the hints of Arab authors to the contrary.

Yakut el-Mahawi, born AH 574 or 575 AD 1178-79 and died AH 626 or AD 1228 in that Mujam el-Budan, cited in the Journal of the Deutsch-Morgen-Gestel-Staft, declares that a South Arabic dialect is of Midian and el-Masudi. Apud Shilton's pages 158-159 inserts a Midianite king among the rulers of Yemen.

The latter, however, is more probable than the former. It may be an accidental and individual, not a material occurrence. The following list of ruins, some cities, other towns, were all, with two exceptions, numbers 2 and 18, visited or explored by the Second Khadivial Expedition. The mashral, ateliers or subsidiary workshops were in cases learned only by hearsay. 1. Old Aqaba'a la Mashral up Valley el Yitim

two el hagl of ptolemy it was seen from the sea and notes were taken of its ruins and furnaces three nakhil tayyib ism in mountain of the same name its ruined dam and buildings were surveyed by a lieutenant amir four makna twice visited

5. Maché Shueb, two ateliers inspected and one heard of on the Jebel Al-Lawz, total 3. 6. Einuna in Jebel Saad, ruins and furnaces. 7. Shamar, an atelier on the Jebel Faz and another on the Jebel Harb, both high up, total 2. 8. Tirim, an atelier on the Wadi Anoub. 9. Abu Hawawit near El Mawila, Skoria found about the fort of El Mawila and near Sham Harar.

10. Zebeyeb in Wadi Sur atelier Seyl um Laban in Wadi Sazer 11. Chulasa saw specimens of worked metal from Wadi Chesabria and the Upper Wadi Sur also ruins in the Seyl Abus Shar southwest and seawards of the Shar block

12. Ma'al Ba'da, alias Diyar al-Nasara in the upper Wadi Dima. 13. Shu'aq of Ptolemy, atelier in Jebel al-Sini. 14. Shaghab, another large city mentioned by Al-Makrizi. 15. Ruins of Al-Khandaki, broken courts and made road at Al-Khutaifa, two other ateliers on the Wadi Ru'ayis to the west, total three. 16. Um Amil, near it an atelier still called Al-Dair or the Convent.

seventeen zebra old town umjerma to the north eighteen majerma one day's march south of zebra large ruins supposed to have been the classical ronathos thus besides a total of eighteen ruins more or less extensive twenty ateliers were seen or heard of making up a total of thirty-eight not far removed from the forty traditional settlements of the medieval arab geographers

In the plateau of New Red Sandstone called El Hizmah, ruins and inscriptions are said to be found at the Jebel Rawiyan, whose wadi is mentioned by Walin, page 308, at Ru'afa, between the two hills El Rachamatin, and at sundry other places which we were unable to visit. Beyond the Hizmah, I also collected notice of El Karaya, large ruins first alluded to by Walin, page 316.

During our explanation of the region below El Mueyla, my southern Midian, and our cruise to El Hora, the following sites were either seen or reported. 1. Ruins in the Wadi Dukhan, south of the Wadi El Aslam, north of El Wij. 2. Al-Nabakha in the Wadi El Mara, north of El Wij. 3. Ruins, furnaces and quartz strews in the Fara'a Lebaiz.

four elwage the port of strabo's egra five inland fort of elwage with an old metal working ground six the great mines and ruins um al karyat everywhere surrounded by ateliers

7. Al-Khubar, a small isolated ruin to the east of number 6. 8. Al-Khor, a working place to the west of number 6. 9. The large works called Umm al-Harab, with two ruined ateliers near them. 10. Abal Gezaz, a working place in the water course of the same name, an upper branch of the Wadi Salbah. 11. The fine plain of Badar, with the Mashgal al-Arafat, heard of to the north.

12. Marwet, ruins on a ridge near Barda and signs of a settlement in the valley in the Wadi Leila remains also spoken of. 13. Abal Maru, probably the Zulmawa of Bilazuri, extensive remains of buildings, a huge reef of quartz, carefully worked and smaller ruins further down the valley. 14. The classical temple or tomb on the left bank of the great Wadi Hams, dividing southern Midian from Al-Hijaz in the Turkish dominions. 15. Large remains in two divisions at Al-Hora.

Concerning the ateliers, details will be found in the following pages. Many of them suggest a compromise between the camps and settlements of the Stone Age, where, e.g. at Prasigny and Grimes' graves, the only remnant of a man is a vast strew of worked selectors and the wandering fraternity of freemasons who hooted themselves near the work in hand, and I would here lay special stress upon my suspicion that the ancestors of the despised Huttaym may have been the gypsy caste that worked the metals in Midian.

For the date of the many ruins which stud the country, I will assume empirically that their destruction is coeval with that of the Christian churches in Negev or the South Country that adjoins Midian proper on the North West.

It may date from either the invasion of Khosrau and of Shirwan, the conquering Sasanian king Khosrowez, AD 531-579, or from the expedition sent by the Caliph Omar and his successors beginning in AD 651, but as will appear in the course of these pages, there was a second destruction, and that evidently dates from the early 16th century when Sultan Selim laid out his maritime road for the Hajj caravan.

Before that time, the Egyptian caravans, as will be seen, marched inland and often passed from Midian to Al-Hijjur.

By the blessing of Nebi Shweb and a glance from his ayah, I at once suspected that the western Shigid was the mountain on a mountain alluded to by Haji Wali, and on January 12th, 1878, I ascertained that such was the case. The old man had given me a hand sketch of the most artless, showing a gorge between two rocks, a hill of two stages to the left or west, and a couple of wadis draining into the sea, one Wadi Makna, trending north-west, and the other Wadi Afal, south-west.

The word Ishma affixed to the northern part of the route is evidently the Hizma plateau and not, as I had supposed it to be, the Jebel Tayyib-ism.

Nor had we any difficulty in discovering Hadjiwali's tree, a solitary mimosa to the right of the caravan track, springing from the sands of the Shigdawain Gorge. The latter is formed by the sister blocks before alluded to. The western shigd, on the right of the Wadi Afal, is composed of carbonate of lime and sandstones dyed with manganese, the whole resting upon a core of grey granite. The formation is the same as the eastern feature, but the lines of the latter are gentler and the culminating tower is wanting.

The western sugar, indeed, is sufficiently peculiar. It is the southern apex of a short range numbering some four heads. The eastern flank discharges the Wadi Kizaz, which feeds the Afal, and the western, the Wadi Makna. The summit of the broken and spiny cone is a huge perpendicular block, apparently inaccessible as a tower, and composed of the dull yellow foraginous conglomerate called El Safra. The tint contrasts strongly with a line of bright white righam or gypsum bisecting the head of Wadi Makna.

Below the apex is a thick stratum of manganese-stained rock. The upper line, with a dip of 15 degrees towards the main valley, looks much like a row of bulwarks which had slipped from the horizontal while still bluffed between the north, east and east. Indeed, the shape is so regular that Major Lacaze at first sight asked if it was une construction. As soon as the washing trough was brought up from Sharma, we opened operations by digging a trench at least 12 feet deep in the re-entering angle of the bed close to the mimosa tree. The sand

pink above and chloritic yellow below, ended in a thick bed of water-rolled pebbles, not in ground rock, nor did it show the couch of excellent clay, which usually underlies the surface, and which, I have said, is extracted through pits to make sun-dried brick, swish and other building materials.

We also secured some of the blood-red earth from the eastern till of the northern shig, the manganese-stained taua, and the gravelly sand washed out of the cascalho gravel, the latter very promising. The result of our careless working, however, was not successful. The normal ilmenite black sand of magnetic iron took the place of gold dust.

and this unlooked-for end and this unlooked-for end again made us suspicious of my old friend's proceedings the first occasion was that of his notable malingering had he bought a pinch of tuber pure gold from the bedouin and mixed it with a handful of surface stuff had the assayer at alexandria played him a trick or has an exceptionally heavy torrent really washed down auriferous tailings

i willingly believe the latter to have been the case and we shall presently see it is within the range of possibility traces of gold were found by lieutenant-colonel w a ross through his pyrological process in the sandy clays brought from the mouth of wady

Meanwhile, despite our magnificent office, the Arabs managed to keep in violent their secret, if they had one. An old man, now rich merchant and householder at Suez, had repeatedly declared to Mr. A.G.K. Levick that in his young days, the Bedouin washed gold in Midian till the industry fell into disrepute. During my last visit, he was unfortunately absent upon a pilgrimage. After our return, he asserted that he had sent for specimens of the sand, but that it paid too little even for transport.

This Abbot al-Hamid al-Shami, interviewed after our return by Mr. Clark, declared more than once, and still declares, that many years ago he obtained from the Wadi Zibar, behind the settlement, a certain quantity of reddish sand which appeared auriferous. He roasted and washed the contents of three small baskets called coffers by Europeans, and this yielded a pinch of what looked like pure gold.

In camp our men spoke freely of Tiber stored in quills, carried behind the ear and sold at sewers, not at Cairo for fear of consequences. Yet neither promises nor bribes would persuade the poorest to break the rule of silence. The whole might have been a canard. On the other hand, there was also valid reason for reticence. The open mouth would not long have led to a sound throat. So our many informants contended themselves

With telling us frequent tales of gold ornaments picked up after the rain, they showed us a ring made from a bit found on the Tabook Road and they invariably assure us that we shall find wondrous things about the next station.

At Marais-Chouet, we wasted a whole fortnight, January 11th to 24th, 1878, in Vainworks, and I afterwards bitterly repented that the time had not been given to South Midian, yet the delay was pleasant enough after a month which is required to acquire, or to recover, the habit of tent life. The halting day was mostly spent as follows. At 6am, and somewhat later on cold mornings, the

the beruji sound as his revier come ya habibi sach al nom rise friend sleep is done as the egyptian officers interpret the call a curious business he makes of it when his fingers are half frozen yet bugler masal abu dunya is a man of ambition who persistently and despite the coarse laughter of europeans repairs for quiet practising to the bush

We drink tea or coffee made by engineer Ali Marie or by quartermaster Youssef, not by Europeans. Two camels, supplies with sweet milk, butter we have brought, and nothing is wanting for complete comfort but bread.

We then separate to our work after telling off the quarrymen to their several tasks. Inveterate idlers and ne'er-do-wells, their only object in life is not to labour. A dozen of them will pass a day in breaking ten pounds weight of stone. They pound in the style of the eastern tobacconist, with a very short stroke and a very long stay.

At last, they burst the sieves in order to enjoy a quieter life. They will do nothing without superintendents. While the officer is absent, they sit and chat, smoke or lie down to rest and they are never to be entrusted with a water skin or bottle of spirits.

The fellows will station one of their number on the nearest hill while their comrades enjoy a sounder sleep. They are the greatest of cowards, and yet none would thus have acted sentinel even in the presence of the enemy. These useful articles, all except a liberal bachshish when the journey is done, with the usual Asiatic feeling, they know that they deserve nothing, but my dignity obliges me to lajes. On this occasion, it did not.

Those told off to dig prefer to make a deep pit because fewer can work together at it rather than scrape off and sift the two feet of surface which yield antiques. They rob what they can. Every scrap of metal stylus, manila or ring is carefully tested, scraped and broken or filed in order to see whether it be gold. Punishment is plentifully administered but in vain. We cannot even cure their unclean habits of washing in and polluting the fountain source.

Three Europeans would easily do the work of these 30 poor devils. Mr Clark is our camp manager in general. He's also our Jaeger. He shoots the wild poultry, duck and partridge, sand grouse and bob white, the quail, for half our dinners and the Arabs call him the angel of death belonging to the birds. He failed to secure a noble eagle in the Wadi al-Fahl whose nest was built upon an inaccessible cliff. He described the bird as standing as high as our table and with a width of six to seven feet from wing to wing.

He also brought tidings of a large horned owl, possibly the same species as the fine bird noted at Sinai. The Arabs call it classically 'Bumar' and vulgarly 'Um Kwek' - mother of squeaking. The Falahin believes that it sucks out children's eyes and hence their name 'Masasa'. Here, as in the Sinaitic Pensula, the owl and the hyena are used as charms and the burnt feathers of the former and the boiled flesh of the latter - superior filth -

are considered as infallible specimens for numerous disorders. In other parts of Arabia the hooting of the owl portends death and the cry "Fat! Fat!" is interpreted "He is gone! Gone!" The two staff officers make plans and sketches of the new places or they protract their field books working very hard and very slowly. I have but little confidence in their route surveys. Sights are taken from muleback and distances are judged by the eye.

True, the protections come out well, but this is all the worse, suggesting the process commonly called doctoring. For the style of thing, however, dead reckoning did well enough. Monsieur Lecaze is the most ardent, accompanied by his favourite orderly Salamat al-Nahas, an intelligent negro from Darfur. He sets out after breakfast with a bread of bread, a flagon of water, a tent umbrella and his tools, which eludes his remarkable punctuality to spend the whole day sketching, painting and photographing.

Monsieur Philippine is our useful man. He superintends the washing cradle. He wanders far and wide, gun in hand, bringing us specimens of everything that strikes the eye, and he is great at his forge. The Bedouin sit for hours gazing attentively as he converts a file into a knife, and illustrating the reverence with which, in early days, men regarded Vulcan and Wayland Smith.

At 11am the bugle sounds tijeri ta'akul, run and feed, a signal for dejeuner à la fourchette. It is a soup, a stew and a pilaf of rice and meat, sheep or goat, the only provisions that poor Midian can afford, accompanied by onions and garlic, which are eaten like apples, washed down with bon ordinaire, followed by cheese when we have it and ending with tea or coffee.

george the cook proved himself an excellent man when deprived of oil and undemoralized by contact with his fellow greeks after feeding the idlers who have slumbered or rather have remained in bed between eight p m and six to seven a m generally manage a couple of hours siesta loudly declaring that they have been wide awake

One of the parties seems to live by the blessing of him who invented sleep, and he is always good for half of the twenty-four hours. How they must envy him whose unhappy brains can be stupefied only by poisonous chloral.

At 2pm, after drinking tea or coffee once more, we proceed for another four hours' spell of work. As sunset and the cold hours draw near, all assemble about the fire, generally two or three huge palm trunks whose blaze gladdens the soul of the lonely night sentinel, and assembling the sheikhs of the Arabs, we gather from them information geographical, historical and ethnological.

The amount of invention or pure fancy of Aerie lying is truly sensational, while at the same time they conceal from us everything they can and more especially everything we most wish to know. Firstly, they do not want us to spy out the secrets of the land and secondly, they count upon fleecing us through another season. During the whole day, but notably at this hour, we have the normal distractions of the Arabian journey.

One man brings and expects back sheesh for a bit of broken metal or some ridiculous stone, another grumbles for meat, and a third wants tobacco, medicine, or something to be had for the asking. I am careful to pay liberally, as by so doing the country is well scoured.

"'Dinner at 7.00 p.m. is a copy of what was served before noon. "'It is followed by another sitting around the fire, "'which is built inside the mess-tent when cold compels. "'At times the conversation lasts till midnight, "'and when cognac or whisky is plentiful, "'I have heard it abut upon the Battle of Waterloo "'and the immortality of the soul.'"

Pique and Ecarte are reserved for life on board ship. Our only reading consists of newspapers which come by camel post every three weeks and a few Tochnitz, often old volumes. I marvel as much as Hamlet ever did to see the passionate influence of the storyteller upon those full-grown children, bearded men, to find them

in the midst of this wild new nature so utterly absorbed by the fictitious weal and woe of some poor creature of the author's brain that they neglect even what they call their meals allow their teas to cool and strain their eyesight poring over page after page in the dim light of a rusty lantern

Thus also the Egyptian, after sitting in his cafe with all his ears and eyes opened their widest while the storyteller drones out the old tale of Abu Zayd, will dispute till midnight and walk home disputing about what, under such and such circumstances, they themselves would have done. To me, the main use of Toknitz was to make Arabia appear the happier by viewing from the calm vantage ground of the desert the meanness and the littleness of civilised life in novels.

The marching day is only the halting day in movement. By 7am in winter and 4am in spring we are breakfasted and are ready to mount mule or dromedary. More generally, however, we set out, accompanied by the Sayyid and the Sheikhs, for a morning walk. The tents, and most important of all, the tent table, are left to follow under the charge of the Egyptian officers who allow no dawdling.

With us are the cook and the two body servants, riding of course. They carry meat, drink and tobacco in my big tin cylinder intended to collect plants and they prefer to give us cold whilst we fight for hot breakfasts.

After resting between 10am and noon in some shady spot, generally under a thorn, we ride on to the camping ground which we reach between 2 and 3pm. This is the worst part of the day for man and beast, especially for the mules, hence the necessity of early rising. The average work rarely exceeds 6 hours, equals 18 to 20 miles. Even this, if kept up day after day, is hard labour for our monteurs, venerable animals whose chests, galled by the breast straps, show that they have not been broken to the saddle.

Accustomed through life to ply in a state of semi-somnolence between Cairo and the citadel, they begin by proving how unintelligent want of education can make one of the most intelligent of beasts. They trip over every pebble and are almost useless on rough and broken ground. They start and swerve at a man, a tree, a rock, a distant view or a glimpse of the sea. They will not leave one another and they indulge their pet dislikes. This shies at a camel that kicks at a dog.

Presently, tamadun, as the Arabs say, urbanity, or more literally being citified, asserts itself as in the human cockney and at last they become cleverer and more knowing than any country bred.

They climb up the ladders of stone with marvellous caution and slip down the slopes of sand on their haunches. They round every rat hole, which would admit a hoof, and they know better than we do where water is. They are not always well treated. The galloping griff is amongst us, who enjoys lambing and bucketing, even a half-donkey. Of course, the more sensible animal of the two is knocked up, whilst the rider assumes the airs of one versed in the haute école.

The only difficulty, by no fault of the mules, was the matter of irons. Shoeless, they could travel only in sand and, as has been said, the farrier was forgotten.

amongst our recreant sheikhs i must not include frej bin rafia el howeiti a man of whom any tribe might be proud and a living proof that the badawi may still be a true gentleman a short figure meagre of course as becomes the denizen of the desert but hard as nails he has straight comely features a clean dark skin and a comparatively full beard already like his hair waxing white although he cannot be forty-five

A bullet in the back and both hands distorted by sabre cuts, attempts at assassination due to his own kin do not prevent his using sword, gun and pistol. He is the agid of the tribe, the African captain of war, as opposed to civil authority, the sheikh, and to the judicial, the khazi. At first, it is somewhat startling to him to prescribe a slit wizened as a cure for lying, yet he seems to be known, loved and respected by all around him, including his hereditary foes, the ma'aza.

He is the only Badawi in camp who prays. Naturally, he is a genealogist rich in local lore. He counteracts all the intrigues by which that rat-faced little rascal, Sheikh Hassan al-Ukbi, tries to breed mischief between friends. He is a walking map. It would be easy to draw up a rude plan of the country from his information. He does not know hours and miles, but he can tell to a nicety the comparative length of a march, and when ignorant, he has the courage to say, Ma'adri, don't know. He

he never asked me for anything not till the lie nor even hid a water-hole willing and ready to undertake the longest march the hardest work his word is khazir i am here and he will even walk to mount a tired man seated upon his loud-voiced little hijan remarkable because he is of noble bishari strain bred between the nile and the red sea he is ever the guide in chief

At last it ends with "Nadi Sheikh Faraj, call Sheikh Faraj, when anything is to be done, to be explained, to be discovered." I would willingly have recommended him for the chieftainship of his tribe, but he is not wealthy. He wisely prefers to see the dignity in the hands of his cousin, Alayyan, who by their way is helpless without him. He remained with us to the end. He seemed to take a pride in accompanying the expedition by sea to El Hora and by land to the Wadi Hams, far beyond the limits of his tribe.

When derided for mounting a pair of government blutches tied over bare feet with bits of glaring tassel string from his camel saddle, he quoted the proverb: "Whose liveth with a people forty days becomes of them." We parted after the most friendly adieu, or rather au revoir, and he was delighted with some small gifts of useful weapons. I wonder whether a sheikh for age will prove milk, to use Sir Walter Scott's phrase, which can stand more than one skimming.

in such wild travel the traveller's comfort depends mainly upon weather usually the air of marais-chouab was keen pure and invigorating with a distinct alternation of land breeze by night and of sea breeze by day nothing could be more charming than the flushing of the mountain at sunrise and sunset and the magnificence of the windy wintry noon

the rocky spires pinnacles and domes glowing with gorgeous golden light and the lower ranges shaded with hazy blue umber red and the luminous purple fell into picture and formed prospects indescribably pure and pellucid

But the average of the aneroid, 29.19, gave an altitude of 800 feet and even in this sub-maritime region the minimum temperature was 42 degrees Fahrenheit, ranging to a maximum of 85 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. These are extremes which the soft Egyptian body reared in the house or the hut could hardly support.

Darwish Effendi followed suit after Yusuf Effendi. It was a study to see him swathed to the nose, bundled in the thickest clothes, with an umbrella opened against the sun, and with a soldier leading his staid old mule. Bukhet Ahmad and several of the soldiers were laid up. Ahmed Kaptan was incapacitated for work by an old and inveterate hernia, the effect, he said, of riding his violent little beast, and a sound ague and fever which continued three days, obliterated in my own course the last evils of Karlsbad.

We had one night of rain in January the 15th, beginning generally at 2.30am and ending in heavy downfall. Unfortunately, a pluviometer was one of the forgotten articles. Before the shower, earth was dry as a bone. Shortly after it, sprouts of the greenest grass began to appear in the low places and under the shadow of perennial shrubs. The cold damp seemed to make even the snakes torpid. For the first time in my life, I trod upon one, a clairvoyant having already warned me against serpents and scorpions.

There were also bursts of heat ending in the normal three grey days of raw piercing norther and followed by still warmer spell. Upon the gulf of Al-Aqaba a violent gale was blowing. On the whole the winter climate of inland Midian is trying and a speedy return to the seaboard air is at times advisable while south Midian feels like Thebes after Cairo. The coast climate is simply perfect save and except when El-Eli, the storm wind from Aqaba to Elah, is abroad.

My meteorological journal was carefully kept and despite the imperfection of the instruments Mr Clark registered the observations during my illness, Mr De Guide, a Nisio Capitan, made simultaneous observations on board the ships and Dr Maclean kindly corrected the instrumental errors after our return to Cairo.

I had proposed to march upon the Hizmah or sandy plateau to the east which can be made from Mareh Shoeb without the mortification of a Nakb or a ladder of stone. Thereupon our Tagaigat, Huaytat, Shaykhs and the Camelmen began to express great fear of the Imran Huaytat refusing to enter their lands without express leave and the presence of a Ghafir or Shuruti.

Our caravan leader, the gallant Saeed, at once set off in search of Brahim bin Makbul, second chief of the Imran, and recognised by the Egyptian government as the avocat, spokesman and diplomatist, the liar and intriguer of his tribe.

This man was found near El Hagul, two long marches ahead. He came in readily enough, holding in hand my kerchief as a pledge of protection and accompanied by three petty chiefs, Musallam, Sa'ad and Muhsin, all with an eye to Bakhshish. In fact, every naked-footed cousin, a little above the average clansman, would call himself a sheikh and claim his mushahira, or monthly pay.

Not a cataran came near us, but affected to hold himself dishonoured, if not provided at once with a regular salary. Brahim was wholly beardless, and our Egyptians quoted their proverb, Better see ill-omened monkeys in the morning than the beardless men.

As the corruption of the best turns to the worst, the Sotheby's Dowie, a noble race in its own wiles, becomes thoroughly degraded by contact with civilization. I remember a certain chief of the Wold Ali tribe near Damascus who was made a freemason at Beirut and the result was that brother Muhammad became a model villain. By way of payment for escort and conveyance to the Hizma, Brahim expected a recognition of his claim upon the soil of Mughaykh Shuraib, which belonged to that wretched Masa'id.

He held the true Ishmaelitic tenet that as Sa'idna, our lord, Adam, had died intestate, so all men, Arab, have a right to all things, provided the right can be established by might. Hence the saying of the Fala, shun the Arab and the Ij. Thus, encouraged by the sheikhs, the dodges of the clansmen became as manifold as they were palpable.

Presently, Brahim brought in his elder brother Khizr bin Mahbool, about as ill-conditioned a Qus as himself.

very dark with the left eye clean gone this worthy appeared pretentiously dressed in the pink of desert fashion a scarlet cloak sheepskin lined and bearing a huge patch of blue cloth between the shoulders a crimson kaftan and red morocco boots with irons resembling ice-cramps at the heels

Like Brahim, he used his bakhur, or crooked stick, to trace lines and dots upon the ground. Similarly, the Yankee whittles to hide that trick that lurks in his eyes. Khazir tents in the Izmar, and his manners are wild and rough as his dwelling place. Possibly manly, brusque certainly, like the desert drusas of the Jebel Horan.

He paid his first visit when our sheikhs were being operated upon by the photographer. I fancied that such a novelty would have attracted his attention for the moment, but no, his first question was "Esh ujjati?" "What is the hire for my camels?" Finally, these men threw so many difficulties in our way that I was compelled to defer our exploration of the eastern region to a later day.

After a week of washing for metals at Marais-Schwebe, it was time to move further afield. On January 17th, the Egyptian staff officers rode up to the Wadi Afal and beyond the two pyramidal rocks of white stone which had fallen from the towered Shigd. They found on its right bank the ruins of a small atelier. It lies nearly opposite the mouth of Wadi Tafrik, which is bounded north by a hill of the same name and south by the lesser Shigd.

Beyond it comes the Wadi Nimir, the broad drain of the Jibbel al-Nimir, hills of the leopard fitting the Afal. The upper valley is said to have water and palms. After a leg to the northeast, 45 degrees magnetic, they found the Afal running from due north and one hour or three miles led them to the other ruins on the eastern side of the low hills that prolong to the north the greater Shigd.

The names of both sites were unknown even to Sheikh Faraj. The foundation of uncut boulders showed a semicircle of buildings measuring 229 paces across the horseshoe. They counted 11 tenements, probably occupied by the slave owners and superintendents, squares and oblongs, separated by intervals of from 45 to 97 or 100 paces.

On the north-north-east lay the chief furnace, a parallelogram of some 23 paces, built of stone and surrounded by scatters of broken white quartz and scoria. These two workshops seemed to argue that the country was formerly much better watered than it is now. Moreover, it convinced me that the only rock regularly treated by the ancients in this region was the metallic maru or quartz.

i had heard by mere chance of a white mountain at no great distance in the mass of hills bounding to the north of the secondary formations of marais chouab on january twenty first monsieur marie and lieutenant amir were detached to inspect it they were guided by the active forage and a badawi lad hamdan of the amriat who on receiving a stone dollar i e silver could not understand its use

Travelling in a general northern direction, the little party reached their destination in about three hours for nine miles. They found some difficulty in threading a mile and a quarter, a very ugly road, a knack of passing through rocks glittering with mica, a ladder of stony steps and overfalls with angles and zigzags where camels can carry only half loads.

The European dismounted. The Egyptian, who was firm in the saddle, rode his mule the whole way. We afterwards, however, explored a comparatively good road via the Wadi Mouakh to the seaboard, which will spare the future metal spelter much trouble and expense. The quartz mountaineers, like almost all the others, the expanded mushroom-like head of a huge filon of vein and minor fillets throughout all the neighbouring heights. The latter are foothills of the great Jebel Zanar, a towering, dark and dome-shaped mass clearly visible from Marais-Chuebbe.

This remarkable block appeared to me the tallest we had hitherto seen. It is probably the Tayibat Ism 6000 of the hydrographic chart. The travellers ascended the Jebel al-Maru, trembling the while with cold, and from its summit, some 1500 feet above sea level, they had a grand view of the seaboard and the sea. They brought home specimens of the rock and fondly fancied that they had struck gold. It was again the abominable Krogold or Pyrites which had played the unwary traveller so many a foul practical joke.

During our stay at Maches Shoeb, the camp had been much excited by Badawra reports of many marvels in the lands to the north and northeast.

The Arabs soon learned to think that everything was worth showing. They led Monsieur Lacaze for long miles to a rock where bees were hiving. A half-naked Umairi shepherd, one Suaid bin Saeed, had told those of a Hajar Masdud closed stone about the size of a tent, with another of darker colour set in it. The Arabs had been able to break it open, but they succeeded with a similar rock in the Hizmar, finding inside only tibbon or striplated chaw and charcoal.

Another had seen a kidu dahab golden pot in the aligan section of the wadi-e-hagal where it leaves the hizmar and a matchlock man had brought down with his bullet a bit of precious metal from the upper part.

This report prevails in many places. It may have come all the way from the Pharaoh's treasury at Petra or from the Sinaitic Wadi Lajjar. At the mouth of the latter is the Hajar al-Kidr or Pot Rock which every passing Arab either stones or strikes with his staff hoping that the mysterious Yotensil will burst and shed its golden shower. Moreover, a half-witted Maazi by name Masai had tantalised us with a glorious account of the House of Antar in the Hizmar and the cistern where that negro hero and poet used to water his horses.

Near its massive walls rises a hazbah, or steep and silatory hillock, with dims or layers of ashlar atop. He had actually broken off a bit of greenstone sticking in the masonry and sold it to a man from Tor, possibly Khawaj Konstantin, for a large sum, two Napoleons, a new shirt and a quantity of coffee. A similar story is found in the Badiat al-Tih,

the desert north of the Sinaitic peninsula at the ruined cairns of Harabat Lusan the ancient Lysa an Arab saw a glimmer of light proceeding from a bit of curiously cut stone this he carried away with him and sold to a Christian at Jerusalem for three pounds

Sheikh Brahim had also heard of this marvel but he called it the Harab Antar or the Ruin of Antar and he placed it in the Wadi al-Hagl about an hour's ride south of the Wadi Afal. Finally a tablet in the Wadi Hawayi adorned with a dragon and other animals was reported to me and the memory of inscriptions mentioned in the Jihand Numa were still importunate. Evidently all these were mere fancies or at best gross distortions of facts.

The Bedouin repeat them in the forlorn hope of Bakhshish and never expect action to be taken. Next morning they will probably declare the hole to be an invention. Yet it is never safe to neglect the cry of Wolf. Our most remarkable discovery, the temple at the Wadi Hams, was made when report promised least.

Accordingly, on January 24th I dispatched with Sheikhs Khizr and Brahim as guides Mr Clark and the two staff lieutenants towards El-Rijm, the next station of the Pilgrim Caravan. Riding up the Wadi Al-Fal, they reached after an hour and three quarters the ruins known as Iqra Muas, a name of truly barbarous sound. The settlement had occupied both banks but the principal mass was on the left.

Here, two blocks separated by a hillock later the northeast and southwest of each other. Apparently, dwelling places, they were composed of a masonry cistern and of 14 buildings, detached squares and oblongs, irregular both in orientation and size, the largest measuring 8 by 50 metres and the smallest 5 by 4. The

The material was of water-rolled boulders, huge pebbles without mortar or cement. There was no signs of a furnace, nor were the usual fragments of glass and pottery strewed about. To the north, and running up the north-north-eastern slope towards a line of wall two metres broad and three hundred long, it ended at the south-western extremity in five round towers raised to their foundations. It was suggested that this formed part of a street laid out on the plan of the Jebel al-Safra, the Hourville of Mre-Shueb,

On the right bank of the wadi appeared a heap of stones suggesting a burge. Fine, hard, compact and purple-blue slate was collected in the ruins and the red conglomerates on either side of the watercourse suggested that Cascaljo had been worked. After riding the dromedaries some three hours, halts not included, the travellers were asked why they had not brought their tents.

"Because we expect to return to camp this evening!" Then it leaked out that they had not reached halfway to the closed stone while the dragon tablet would take a whole day. Unprepared for a wintery night in the open some 1200 feet above sea level, they rode back at full speed, greatly to the disgust of the Arabs who, at this hungry season, rarely pushed their lean beasts beyond three and a half to four miles an hour.

Lieutenant Amir, who is invaluable in the field, would have pressed forward, not so the European. I did not see Sheikhs Khazir or Brahim for many a day, nor did we attempt any more reconnaissances to the north of Mughal Shoaib.

Not the least pleasant part of our evening's work was collecting information concerning the origin of the tribes inhabiting modern Midian and as on such occasions a mixed multitude was always present angry passions were often let rise. As my previous volume showed the tribes in this Egyptian corner of northwestern Arabia number three the Huaytad, the Macknawi and the Beniukba

former of late date and all more or less connected with the Nile valley amongst them I do not include the Hutaym or the Hittaym a tribe of pariahs who like the Akhdam serviles of Muscat and Yemen live scattered amongst although never intermarrying with their neighbours

As a rule, the numbers of all these tribes are grossly exaggerated, the object being to impose upon the pilgrim caravans and to draw blackmail from the government of Egypt. The Hawaitat, for instance, modestly declare that they can put 5,000 matchlocks into the field. I do not believe that they have 500. The Ma'aza speak of 2,000, which may be reduced in the same proportion, whilst the Bali have introduced their 37,000 into European books of geography, when 370 would be nearer the mark. I

I anticipate no difficulty in persuading these Egypto-Arabs to do a fair day's work for a fair and moderate wage. The Bedouin flocked to the Suez Canal, took an active part in the diggings and left a good name there. They will be as useful to the mines and thus shall Midian escape the mortification of the red flannel-shirted Jove while enjoying his gold shower.

I first took the opportunity of rectifying my notes on the origin of the Huaytad tribe. According to their own oral genealogists, the first forefather was a lad called Alay'an who, travelling in company with certain Sharafar, descendants of the Apostle and Ergo held by his descendants to have also been a Sharif, fell sick on the way. At Al-Aqabah he was taken in charge by Atiyah, sheikh of the then powerful Ma'aza tribe who owned the land upon which the fort stands. A clerk able

able to read and to write, he served his adopted father by superintending the accounts of stores and provisions supplied to the Hajj.

The Arabs, who before that time embezzled at discretion, called him al-Huwaiti, the man of the little wall, because his learning was a fence against their frauds. He was sent for by his Egyptian friends. These, however, were satisfied by a false report of his death. He married his benefactor's daughter. He became sheikh after the demise of his father-in-law. He drove the ma'aza from al-Akhbar and he left four sons, the progenitors and eponimai of the Midianite Huwaitat.

Their names are Alwan, Imran, Sa'id and Sa'id and the list of 19 tribes which I gave in The Goldmines of Midian is confined to the descendants of the third brother.

The Huaytac tribe is not only an intruder, it is also the aggressive element in the Midianite family of Bedouin and of late years it has made great additions to its territory. If it advances the present rate it will, after a few generations either eat up, as Africans say, all the other races or by a more peaceful process assimilate them to its own body. We also consulted Sheikh Hassan and his cousin Ahmed alias Abu Khatam concerning the origin of his tribe, the Beni Okhbar.

According to our friend Faraj, the name means son of the heel, Aqab, because in the early wars and conquests of Islam they fought during the days by the Muslims' side and at night when going over to the Nazarenes they lost the spore by wearing their sandals heel foremost and by shooing the horses the wrong way. All this they indignantly deny and they are borne out by the written genealogies who derived them from Akbar, the son of Mahdi,

son of Herem of the Khatiani Jokata Knight Arabs some of the noblest of Badawi blood

They preserve the memory of their ancestor Uqbar and declare that they come from the south, that is, they are of Hijazi descent, consequently far more ancient than the Huaytad. At first called al-Mus'alima, they were lords of all the broad lands extending southwards between Sharma, Assyria and the Wadi Damah, below the port of Ziba, and this fine valley retains, under its Huayti occupants, the title of Uqbiah, Uqbar Land.

Thus, they still claim as milk or unalienable property the Wadis Gha, Shaama, Ainuna and others whilst their right to the ground upon which Fort El Mueyla is built has never been questioned. The first notable event in the history of the Beni Uqbar was a quarrel that rose between them and their brother tribe, the Beni Amr. The Ain al-Tabakha, the fine water of Wadi Madjan, now called Wadi Makna, was discovered by a Hatemi shepherd of the Beni Ali clan while tending his flocks.

Others say that the lucky man was a hunter following a gazelle. However that may be, the finders reported the Sheikh of Mosalima, Beni Akbar, who had married Ayyafa, the sister of Ali ibn Nejdi, the Beni Amr chief, whilst the latter had also taken his brother-in-law's sister to wife. The discoverer was promised a jinu or sabata date bunch from each palm tree and the rivals waxed hot upon the subject.

The Musalima declared that they would never yield their rights, a certain ancestor, As-Sela, having first pitched tent upon the Rehamat Makna, or White Horse of Makna. A furious quarrel ensued and, as usual in Arabia as in Hibernia, both claimants prepared to fight it out.

To repeat the words of our oral genealogist Faraj, now when the wife of the Sheikh of the Musalima had heard and understood what Satan was tempting her husband to do against her tribe, she rose up and sent a secret message to her brother of the Beni Amr, warning him that a certain person, Fulan, was about to lay violent hands on the beautiful valley of Al-Madian.

hearing this the beni amr mustered their young men and mounted their horses and dromedaries and rode forth with jingling arms and at midnight they found their opponents asleep in el-khabd the beasts being tied up by the side of their lords so they cut the cords of the camel they gagged the hunter who guided the attack they threatened him with death if he refused to obey and they carried him away with them towards machna

When the Musalima awoke, they discovered the deceit. They secured their beasts and hastened after the enemy, following his track like Azrael. Both met at Machna when a battle took place and Allah inclined the balance towards the Beni Amr. The Musalima, therefore, became exiles and took refuge in Egypt. And in the flow of days, it so happened that the Sheikh of the Beni Amr woke suddenly at midnight and heard his wife, as she sat grinding at the quern, sing this quatrain.

if the hand-mill of fate grind down our tribe we will bear it o thou allah that aidest to bear but if the mill grind the foeman tribe we will pound and pound them as thin as flour whereupon the sheikh in his wrath seized the stone and cast it at his wife and knocked out one of her front teeth

She said nothing but she took the tooth and wrapped it in a rag and sent it with a message to her brother the Sheikh of Masalima. Now this chief was unable to revenge his sister single-handed so he travelled to Syria and threw himself at the feet of the great Sheikh of the Wahidi tribe who was also a Sharif.

the wahedi dispatched his host together with the warriors of the mussalima and both went forth to do battle with the beni amr the latter being camped in a valley near enuna tethered their dogs and some say left behind their old people and lit huge bonfires whence the name of the place is udi um niran the mother of fires to this day

Before early dawn they had reached in flight the wadi Arawah of the Jibbel el-Tihama. In the morning of the Musalima and the Wahidi, finding that a trick had been practiced upon them, followed the foe and beat him in the wadi Arawah, killing the Sheikh. And the chief of the Musalima gave his widowed sister as wife to the Wahidi and settled with his people in their old home.

The Beni Amr fled to the Hizmar and exiled themselves to the Karak in Syria where they still dwell, owning the plain called the Ganan Shabib. There is now peace between the Beni Uqbar and their kinsman the Beni Amr. The second event in the history of the tribe, the tale of Abu Rish, shall also be told in the words of Fureij. After the course of time the Beni Uqbar aided by the Ma'aza made war against Sharafa who were great lords in those days and plundered them and drove them from their lands.

The victors were headed by one Salama, a Wahiti who dwelt at Al-Aqabah and who had become their guest. In those ages the daughters of the tribe were wont to ride before the host in their wahadig or camel litters singing the war song to make the warriors brave. As Salama was the chief Mubariz, champion in single combat, the girls begged him to wear, when fighting, a white ostrich feather in his chain helmet that they might note his deeds and chant his name. Hence his title Abu Rish, the father of a feather.

The Sharifs, being beaten, made peace, taking the lands between Wadi Dammar and Al-Hijaz, whilst the Beni Uqbar occupied Midian proper, North Midian, between Dammar and Sharma, Syria.

Abu Rish, who was a friend to both the victor and vanquished, settled among the Sharifs in the Sir country, south of Wadi Dama. He had received to wife, as a reward for his bravery, the daughter of the Sheikh of the Beni Uqbar, and she bare him a son, Id, whose tomb is the Wadi Rahl, between Ziba and El Muella.

On the Yom El-Sabbuch, or seventh day after birth, the mother of Eid followed the custom of the Arabs and, after the usual banquet, presented the babe to the guests, including her father, who made over Wadi Einuna in a free gift to his grandson. Now, Eid used to lead the caravans to Cairo for the purpose of buying provisions and he was often plundered by the Ma'aza, who had occupied by force the wadis Sharma, Tiriam and Sur of El Muella.

This Id ibn Salama left by a Huwaiti woman a son, Alayan, surnamed Abu Taqiqa, father of Asghar, from a sabre-cut in the forehead. He was the founder of the Tugaygat Huwaitid clan and his descendants still swear by his name. Once upon a time, when leading his caravan, he reached the Wadi Afal and he learned that his enemies, the Ma'aza and the black slaves who garrisoned in Malweila, were lurking in the Wadi Marayar.

So he placed his load under a strong guard and he hastened with his kinsmen of the Huaytat to the Hizmar where the Ma'aza had left their camels undefended. These he drove off and rejoined his caravan rejoicing. The Ma'aza hearing of the disaster hurried inland to find out the extent of the loss abandoning the black slaves who nevertheless were still determined to plunder the Qafila.

Alain was apprised of their project and, reaching the Wadi Um Ghahela, he left his caravan under a guard and secretly posted 50 matchlocked men in El Sawera, east of the hills of El Mawela. He then, behold his cunning, tethered between the two hosts at a place called Zila, east of the tomb of Sheikh Abdullah, ten camel colts without their dams. Roused by the bleating, the Negro slaves followed the sound and fell into the ambush and were all slain.

Alayyan returned to the Sir country when his tribe the Waitat said to him "Heya!" up to battle with his Ba'aza and Bani Uqba. Either they uproot us or we uproot them. So he gathered the clan and marched to a place called Al-Bazaar where he found the foe in front.

On the next day the battle began and it was fought out from Friday to Friday. A truce was then made and it was covenanted to last between evening and morning. But at midnight the enemy arose. He left his tents pitched and fled to the Hizmah. Alayyan followed the fugitives, came up with them in the Wadi Sadr and broke them to pieces. Upon this they took refuge in Egypt and Syria.

After a time the Beni Okpah returned and obtained pardon from Alain the Hueti who imposed upon them six conditions. Firstly, having lost all right to the land, they thus became brothers, i.e. serviles. Secondly, they agreed to give up the privilege of escorting the Hajj caravan.

Thirdly, if a Huwiti were proved to have plundered a pilgrim, his tribe should make good the loss, but if the thief escaped detection, the Beni Uqbar should pay the value of the stolen property in coin or in kind. Fourthly, they were bound not to receive as guests any tribe enumerating a score or so at enmity with the Huwaitat. Fifthly, if a Sheikh

of Huaytad fancied a dromedary belonging to one of the Beni Uqbar, the latter must sell it under cost price. And sixthly, the Beni Uqbar were not allowed to wear the Aba or Arab cloak. The Beni Uqbar were again attacked and worsted in the days of Sultan Salim by the hereditary foe, the Ma'aza. They complained at Cairo and the Mamluk Beys sent down an army which beat the enemy in the Wadi Sur.

They had many quarrels with the southern neighbours, the Bali. At last, peace was made and the land was divided. The Beni Uqba taking the tract between the wadis Dama and El Muzerib.

Since that time, the tribe has been much encroached upon by the Huaytat. It still claims, however, as has been said, all the lands between El Mueyla and Machna, where they have settlements, and the Jebel Harb, where they feed their camels. They number some 25 to 30 tents, boasting that they have hundreds, and, as will appear, their sheikh, Hassan el Mukbi, amuses himself by occasionally attacking and plundering the wretched Machnawis, or people of Machna, a tribe weaker than his own. End of section 6.

CHAPTER VI. TO MAKNA AND OUR WORK THERE, THE MAGANI OR MAKNAWIS After a silly fortnight atol Madiyama I resolved to march upon its seaport, Makna, the Makna of Ptolemy, which the people also call Madian.

We set out at 7am on January 25th and after a walk of 45 minutes we were shown by Frege a radier or shallow basin of clay shining and bald as an old scalp from the chronic sinking of water.

In the middle stood two low heaps of fine white cement mixed with brick and gravel, while to the west we could trace the framework of a mortared fiskier or cistern measuring five metres each way. The ruin lies a little south of west, 241 degrees magnetic from the greater Shigd and is directly under the catacombed hill which bears the praying place of Jethro.

A tank in these regions always presupposes a water pit and there are lingering traditions that this is the well of Moses, so generally noticed by medieval Arab geographers. It's the only one in the Wadi Makna, not to mention a modern pit about an hour and a half further down the valley, sunk by the Bedouin some 20 feet deep. The walls of the latter are apparently falling in and it is now bone dry.

But the veritable Moses Well seems to have been upon the coast, and, if such be the case, it is clean forgotten. True, Mas'id, the mad old Ma'azi, attempted to trace a well inside our camp by the seashore, but the Beni Akbar, to whom the land belongs, had never heard of it.

After marching about six miles, we entered a gorge called Um El Biban, the Mother of Gates, formed by the stony spurs of the Wadi Bank. The number of birds and trees, especially in the Sinitic valleys, showed that water could not be far off. At ten past ten a.m., a halt was called at the halfway place, a bay or hollow in the left cliff El Homayra, the Little Red, an overhanging wall of riddy grit some eighty feet high, with strata varying in depth from a few lines to as many fathoms, all differing in colour, and all honeycombed, frayed,

and sculptured by wind and rain. Above the red grit, weathered into a thousand queer shapes, stood strata of claritic sand, a pale yellow-green, and capping it rose the usual dull-brown carbonate of lime. Large fossil oysters lay in numbers about the base, suggesting a prehistoric feast of the titans. Amongst them is the monstrous Tridacna gigantea, which sometimes attains a growth of a yard and a half,

One of these is used as a binetier at the church of Saint Sulpice, Paris. Amongst the layers were wavy bands of water-rolled crystals, jaspers, bloodstones, iron-reveted pebbles and almonds, which in the Brazil accompany and betray the diamond. We had no time to make a serious search, but when the metals shall be worked, it will, perhaps, be advisable to import a skilled prospector from the Brazil or the Cape of Good Hope.

"'At noon we met the heaven-sent, life-sustaining sea-breeze, "'and now the broad and well-marked Wadi Makna, "'with its rosy-pink sands narrowed to a gut, "'flanked and choked on both sides, north and south, "'by rocks of the strangest tricolour, "'green-black, yellow-white, and rusty-red. "'The gloomy peak, which had long appeared capping the heights ahead, "'proved to be the culmination of a huge upthrust of porphyritic trap.'

Bottle green, when seen under certain angles, and dull, dead sable at others, it was varied gated by cliffs and slopes polished like dark mirrors and by sooty sand shunts disposed at the natural slope. Crumbling outside, the lower strata pass from the cellula to the compact and are often metalliferous when in contact with the quartz. At these salbains, the richest mineral deposits are always found.

set in and on the black flanks and looking from afar like gouts of a bloodstone are horizontal beds perpendicular spines and detached blocks of felsitic porphyry and of rusty red cyanite altered broken and burnt by platonic heat

In places where the trap has cut through the more modern formations it has been degraded by time from a dyke to a ditch, the latter walled by the ruddy rocks and sharply cut as a castle moat. And already we could see on the right of the wadi these cones and crests of ghastly glaring white gypsum which we had called the hats.

These gloomy cliffs approaching the maritime plain sweep away to the south and melt into the red hills visited on our first excursion. They are known as the Jebel al-Abdin of the two slaves. This perhaps is the Doric pronunciation of the Bedouin for Abdin, slaves.

Presently we cited the familiar features of the seaboard described in my first volume, especially the Rikamat el-Margaz to the north and westward the Gulf of Aqaba, looking cool and blue in the Arabian glare. After 5 hours and 30 minutes, 17 and a half miles in the saddle, we reached Machna.

I had thought of encamping near the praying place of Moses, a fine breezy site which storms would have made untenable. As at Shalmar, camels must turn off to the right over the banks when approaching the mouth of the Wadi Madian, whose bed is made impassable by rocks and palm thicket.

We then proposed to pitch the tents upon the valley sands within the gate but this was overruled by the Sayyid who told grisly tales of fever and ague. Finally we returned to our former ground near the old conglomerates and the mass of new shells which led to the shore of the little harbour. Approaching it we were delighted to see the gunboat Mokhbir steaming up

despite the contrary wind from Sham Yachar. She was towing the sambuk, which brought from Enuna Bay our heavy gear, rations and tools. This was a stroke of good luck. Already we were on half rations and Provence for men and mules threatened to run short.

Our week at Machinar, January 25th to February 2nd, justified the pleasant impression left by the first visit and enabled us to correct the inaccuracies of a flying survey. This valley of waters with its pink and yellow chloritic sands is bounded on the right near the sea by a sandbank about 100 feet high, a loose sheet thinly covering the dikes of Sinait and the Porphyritic Trap, which in places peep out.

Possibly it contains, like the left flank, veins of quartz lowered by corrosion and concealed by the sand drift spread by the prevalent western winds.

The high level abounds in detached springs, probably the drainage of R'ghamat Makna, the huge horse or buttress of gypsum bearing northeast from the harbour. The principal veins number three. The uppermost and sweetest is the Ain al-Tabakha. In the middle height is Al-Tuyuri or Um al-Tuyuru, with the dwarf cataract and its tinkling song, whilst the brackish Ain al-Farai occupies the valley soul.

Besides these, a streak of palms perpendicular to the run of the wadi shows a rain basin, dry during the droughts, and higher up, the outlying dates springing from the arid sands are fed by thin veins which damp the rocky base. Hence, probably, Dr Beek identified the place with the Elim of the Exodus. His artist's sketch from the sea, page 340, is, however, absolutely unrecognisable.

the high-level spring and the middle water rise in sandy basins course down deeply furrowed beds of grit and after passing through a tangle of vegetation a dense forest of palms alive and dead and open patches sown with grain wilfully waste their treasures in the upper slope of the right bank

This abundance of water has developed a certain amount of industry. Although the Bedouin tear to pieces the young male dates, whose tender green growth at the base of the fronds supplies them with a chore, a number of artificial runners has been trained to water dwarf barley plots, whose fences of date fronds defend them from sheep and goats. And further down the bank are the fruit trees which first attracted our attention.

The low-level water consists of two springs. The upper is the Ain el Ereana, springing from the sands under the date trees, which line the right and left sides. Apparently it is the drainage of a gypsum hat called El Kuleb, the little dog. In their Doric, the Bedouin pronounced the word Galeb.

Further down the bed, undivided by a tract of dry sand, is the Ain el-Fara'i, which also rises from both banks, forms a single stream, sleeps in deep, polluted pools like fairy baths among the huge boulders of grey granite, and finally sinks before reaching the shore. When these waters shall again be regulated, as

As of old, they will prove amply sufficient for the vegetable and the mineral. Anton the Greek, who everywhere saw the shop, was so charmed with the spot that he at once laid out his establishment. Here shall be the hotel, there the billiard and gambling room, and there the garden, the kiosk, the bouvet. In fact, he projected a miner's paradise.

On the crest of this right bank, above the vegetation, lies the traditional Musselet Musar, or Moses Oratory, of which the foundations, or rather the base stones, are in situ. The large Ancien measures, without including two walls projecting from the northeast and northwest angles, an oblong of 37 by 25 feet, and as usual with Midianite ruins, it has been built up of all manner of material.

The inner sanctum opens to the west, the northern and southern basement lines only remaining. The former is composed of eight blocks of gypsum resembling alabaster, five being larger than the others, and the southern of three. Upon these, the Bedouins still deposit their simple ex votos, oyster and other shells, potsherds and coloured pebbles. The left, or opposite bank which wants water, is formed by the tall conglomerate capped cliffs which support the Motali or Oatville, and by the warty block called Jebel el Fahisat,

In the Goldmans of Midian, chapter 12, it is called El Muzayndi, an era of my informants, for El Muzayudi. The latter is the name of the small red hill north of our camp. I again visited the high town, which is about 100 feet above the valley. Presently, it will disappear bodily as its base is being corroded, like the Jebel al-Safra of Makhay Shoaib. The walls still standing form a long room running north-south, and two adjoining closets set off to the north-east and south-east.

This sadly shrunken upper settlement covers the remnant of the rocky plateau to the east. There are also traces of buildings on the southern slopes. Ruined heaps of the usual materium, gypsum, dot and line the short broad valley to the north, which rejoices in the neat and handy name Wajimanjara Sayle Jebel el Maru.

Here, however, they are hardly to be distinguished from the chloritic spines and natural sandbanks that stud the bed. The only antiquities found in the Mutali were a stone cut into parallel bands and the fragment of a basalt door with its pivot acting as hinge in the upper part. It reminded me of the Greco-Roman townlets in the Horan where the credulous discovered giant cities and similar ineptitudes.

Our search for Midnight Money was in vain. Mr Clark, however, picked up near the sea a silver temur, the Mughal, with a curiously twisted Kufic inscription from AH 734. The ushash, or front huts, of the Maknawi and the Beni Uchbar were still mostly empty. At this season, all along the seaboard of northwestern Arabia, the Bedouin are grazing their animals in the uplands, and they will not return coastwards till July and August supply the date harvests.

The village shows the inconsequence of doors and wooden keys to defend an interior made of cajan or dry date fronds which bound in bundles make a good hedge but at all times a bad wall. One of its peculiar features is what looks like a truncated and roofless oven. In this swish cylinder they pound without soaking the date kernels that feed their camels, sheeps and goats.

a few youths however who remained in this apology for a deserted village assisted us in night fishing with a lantern and they brought from the adjoining reefs the most delicate of shell and scale fish

The best were the longustes, Palinaris vulgaris, the clawless lobsters called crawfish or crayfish in the United States and the ergosta or avagosta of the Adriatic. It was confounded by the Egyptian officers with abugalambo, the crab, or cancer pelagicus. The eschenidae of various species, large-spined and small-spined, the latter white as well as dull red, were preserved in spirits.

Amongst the excellent fish, the marjan, the sultan al-bahr, the palameter or scomber, the makli, red mullets, mughal, cephalas, and the buri were monstrous animals with big eyes and long beaks like woodcocks. Some of these were garnished with rows of ridiculously big teeth.

i failed to procure life specimens of small turtles and yet the holes were full of carapaces all broken and eight ribbed one species the sakara supplies tortoise shells sold at suez for a hundred and fifty piastres per rattle or pound

The Bisa, another large kind without carapace, is used only for eating. Both are caught off the reefs and islets. An eel-like water snake, Marina, should fight when attacked. The Arabs do not eat it, yet they will not refuse the Shagah, or large black land snake.

The enforced delay at Machna gave us the opportunity of making careful reconnaissances in its neighbourhood. During the last spring I had heard of a Jebel al-Kibit, Sulphur Hill, on the road to Ainuna, but no guide was then procurable. Shortly after our return, a Badawi named Jazi brought in fine specimens of

brimstone, pure crystals adhering to the secondary calcaire and possibly formed by decomposition of the sulphate of lime. If this be the case we may hope to find the mineral generally diffused throughout these immense formations. Of course in some places the yield will be richer and in others poorer.

Further investigation introduced us, as will be seen, to two southern deposits without including one heard of in northern Sinai. All lie within a short distance of the sea and all are virgin. The Bedouin import their sulphur from the Bar el-Ajam, the popular name for Egypt, properly meaning Persia or any non-Arab land. Thus, in one important article, Midian rivals, if not excels, the riches of the opposite African shore, where for a single mine 30 millions of francs have been demanded by way of indemnity.

Betimes on January 26th, a caravan of four camels from the two quarrymen and the guide set off southwards, carrying sacks, tools and other necessaries. They did not return till the morning of the third day. Jazir had lost the road and the Bedouin rather repented of having been so ready to disclose their treasures. Of course, our men could not ascertain the extent of the deposits, but they brought back rich specimens which did not

which determined me to have the place surveyed. Unfortunately I had forgotten a sulphur still and the engineer vainly attempted to extract the ore by looting together two iron mortars and by heating them to a red heat. The only result was the diffusion of the sulphur crystals in the surrounding gypsum. This discovery gave me abundant trouble. The second search party was a failure and it was not until February 18th that I could obtain a satisfactory plan of the northern Jebel el-Karuit.

At Machna I was much puzzled by the presence of the porous basalt which had yielded on the first expedition a vein of electron, gold and silver mixed by the hand of nature. The platonic rock, absent from Wadi Machna, appears in scatters along the shore to the north. Our friend Faridj knew nothing nearer than Al-Hara, the volcanic tract bounding the Hizmar on the east and distant some five days' march.

This was going too far. Querns of the same material found in all the ruins suggested a neighbouring outcrop. Moreover, during the last spring, I had heard of a mining site called Nachil Tayeb Ism, the palm orchard of the good name, in the so-called range to the north of Machna.

Lieutenant Amir was dispatched January 27th to seek for Basalt with a small dromedary caravan under the lead of Sheikh Furej. After winding for about two hours along the shore which is cut by the broad mouths of many a wadi and whose corallines, grits and limestones are weathered into the strangest shapes he left to the right or east the light-coloured Jebel Suk. On the southern side of the wadi Suk which drains it to the sea a hill of the poorer stone which the Arabs call Hajar el-Hara appeared.

The specimens brought home, Severa sunt exposita, if they really be taken from an outcrop, prove that volcanic centres detached, sporadic and unexpected, like those found further north, occur even along the shore.

As will appear afterwards, another little hurrah was remarked by Burkhardt, Syria, page 522, about one hour and a quarter north of Sinaitic Shurm. He says, here, for the first and only time, I saw volcanic rocks, and he considers that their extension towards Ras Abu Muhammad may have given rise to the name. Wellstead, who apparently had not read Burkhardt, makes the same remark.

The many eruptive centres in the limestones of Syria and Palestine were discovered chiefly by my late friend, loved and lamented, Charles F. Tiroit Drake. It would be interesting to ascertain the relation which they bear to tile great lines of volcanism in the far interior of the Horan and the Hara, subtending the coast mountains. And Dr. Beek, another friend now no more, would have been delighted to know that his true Mount Sinai was not unconnected with a volcanic outbreak.

Beyond the Wadi Souk, a bad rough path leads along the base of the Taizm mountain, then the cliffs fall sheer into the sea, explaining why caravans never travel that way.

Yet there was a maritime road, for we know that Abu Sufyan, on his way from Syria to fight the Battle of Badr AH2, passed by a roundabout path for safety along the shore of Midian. Thus compelled, the track bends inland and enters a nakab, a gash conspicuous from the Gulf, an immense cannon or kulua that looks as if ready to receive a dike or vane. Curious to say, a precisely similar formation prolonged to the southwest cuts the cliffs south of Mas'ad Dahab in the Sinaitic Peninsula.

The southern entrance to the gorge bears signs of human habitation. A parallelogram of stones 120 paces by 91 has been partially buried by a landslip and there are remnants of a dam measuring about 100 meters in length.

About 300 yards higher up, water appears in abundance and palm clumps grow on both sides of it. Here, however, all trace of man is wanting. The winter torrents must be dangerous and there is no grass for sheep. The crevasse now becomes very wild. The pass narrows from 50 to 10 paces and in one section a loaded camel can hardly squeeze through whilst the cliff walls of red and grey granite tower some 2,000 feet above the thread of the path.

Water, which as usual sinks in the sand, is abundant enough in three other places to supply a large caravan and two date clumps were passed. Hence, if all here are told to be true, the Nahil or palm plantation Tayib-Ism reported to the first expedition. After covering 16 miles in five hours, the caravan has not made more than half the distance to the Bir al-Marshi, where a small masar or anchorage ground called El Soehil, the little shore, nestles in the long sand slope between the mountain Tayib-Ism and its huge

northern neighbour, the Mishafa block. From this well of the Walker, a pass leads to the Wadi Mashar, where, according to certain Bedouin, are found extensive ruins and the Biban or doors or catacombs. The hole is, however, an invention. Our Sayyid had ridden down the valley during his journey to Al-Hagal.

On the next day another reconnaissance was made. I had been shown fine specimens of quartz from the eastern highlands. Moreover, a bottle of bitter or sulphur water from the Wadi Maboug, the Oblique or Crooked Valley mentioned in the gold mines of Midian had been brought to us with much ceremony. Those who tasted it indeed were divided as to whether it smacked more of brimstone or of ammonia. Accordingly,

Mr. Clark and Lieutenant Yusuf walked up the Wadi Makna and ascended the Maboug, where the mineral spring proved to be a shallow pool of rainwater, much frequented by animals, camels included. Search for the Maru was more successful. They found a network of veins in the sandstone grits of the Jebel Umm Lasaf, and they thus established the fact that the white stone abounds to the east as well as to the south of Makna.

Meanwhile, we were working hard at the Jebel al-Fahisat, the great discovery of the northern journey. I had been struck by the name of the water course to the north of the Hauteville, Wadi Marja's sail Jebel al-Maru, the nuller of the divide of the torrent that pours from the mountain of quartz.

Moreover, a Maknawi lad, Id ibn Mohsin, had brought in fine specimens of the Negra or iridescent variety, offering to show the place. Lastly, other Badawi had contributed fine specimens of Maru with the grey copper standing out in its veins. On

On the evening of January 27th we walked up the picturesque mouth of the Makna Valley. After passing the conglomerate gate and the dwarf plantations on both sides above it, we reached in 45 minutes the spot where the lower water Ain el-Fara'i tumbles over the rock of grit and granite. On the left bank, denoted by luxuriant growth of rushes, is an influent called Shab el-Kazi or the Judge's Pass.

ascending it for a few paces we struck up the broad and open fiumara which i shall call for shortness wadi majra the main trunk of many branches it is a smooth incline perfectly practicable to camels with banks and buttresses of green yellow chloritic sand and longitudinal spines outcropping from the under surface

It carries off the surplus water from the northwestern slopes of that strange wave-like formation, the Jebel al-Fahisat, which bounds the right southern bank of the Wadi Makna. Presently we cited the Jebel al-Maru the strangest spectacle. The apex of the gloomy porphyritic trap is a long spine of the tenderest azure white, filmy as the finials of a Milan cathedral and apparently melting into thin air.

its crest seems abnormally tall and distant and below it a huge grey vein horizontal and wavy cuts and pierces the peaklet of red rock and is cut and pierced in its turn by two perpendicular dikes of porphyritic trap one flanking the right and left shoulders of the low cone when standing upon the haute ville during my first visit i had remarked this white lady of a vein without however attaching to it any importance

After a quarter of an hour's walk up the Madiwajar, we came to a sandy base of the rocky Fahisat and climbed up a torrent ladder with drops and stiff gradients which were presently levelled for the convenience of our quarrymen. A few minutes swarming placed us upon the narrow knife-like ridge of snowy quartz so weathered that it breaks under the hand. This is the aerial head from which Biloo appears so far.

The summit, distant from our camp about one direct mile and a quarter, gives 355 degrees to the Gypsum Hill, Rez el Tarah on the shore 358 degrees to the palm clump nearest the sea and due north 360 degrees all magnetic to the tents which are well in sight. The altitude is about 600 feet.

The view from this summit of the Fahisat is charming as it is extensive. Westward and broad, stretching to the northwest, lies the fair blue gulf that shows on its far side the broken mountains of the Sinaitic Peninsula. Northwards at our feet stretch the palm groves of Machna, a torrent of verdure pouring towards the shore. A little to the left, sheltered from the boreal wind by the white gypsophila,

Gypsious Ridge, Razaltara, the head that surrounds, and flanked at both ends by its triangular roofs, the Sharm Makna, the past and future ports of the mines, supports the miniature gunboat, no larger than a cock, and the Sambuk dwarfed to a boy. Beyond the purpling harbour, along the glaring yellow shore, cut by broad, waddy mouths, and dotted here and there with a date clump, the corallines, grits and sandstones are weathered to the quaintest forms, giant pins and mushrooms, columns and ruined castles.

These maritime lowlands are bounded on the north by heights in three distinct plains. The nearest is the Jebel Suk, low and white. Farther rises Tayyib Ism, a chocolate-coloured mass studded with small peaks, while the horizon is closed by the grand blue wall, the Jebel al-Mashafa. In places, their precipices drop bluff to the sea, but the huge valley mouths separating the two greater ridges have vomited a quantity of sand, forming the tapering tongue and tip known as the Little Shore.

Turning to the east and the southeast we have for horizon the Wadi al-Kharaj backed by its immense right bank of yellow gypsum which dwarfs even the Rukhamat Makna and over it we catch sight of the dark and gloomy Qalbel Naqlah, a ridge which, running parallel with and inland of the Fahisat, will be worked when the latter is exhausted.

We at once recognised the value of this discovery when, reaching the tents, we examined the quartz and found it seamed and pitted with veins and geodes containing colorado, earthy and crumbling metallic dust, chlorure, iodure and bromure of silver with various colours red, ochre yellow and dark chocolate brown.

"'It stained the fingers and was suspiciously light, non porté. "'I must regret that here, as indeed throughout their exploration, "'all our specimens were taken from the surface, "'we had not time to dig even a couple of feet deep. "'The lad Id almost fainted with joy and surprise "'when the silver dollars were dropped into his hand one by one "'with the reiteration of, "'Here's another for you, and here's another.'

This lavishness served to stipulate cupidity, and every day the Bedouins brought in specimens from half a dozen different places. But the satisfaction was at its height when the crucible produced, after cupellation, a button of silver weighing some 20 grams from the 100 grams of what the grumbling Californian miners had called in their wrath dashed black dust, and when a second experiment yielded 28 grams, each 15 grains and a half, and 10 centigrams from 111 grams, or about a quarter of a pound avoir de poids.

In the latter experiment also, the culot came away without the letharge, which almost always contained traces of silver and antimony. Hence, we concluded that the proportions were 30 to 110, a magnificent result, considering that 12.5 to 100 is held to be rich ore in the silver mines of the Pacific states.

The engineer was radieux with pride and joy. The yellow tints of the buttons promised gold, query 2%, query 3%. Immense wealth lay before us. A ton of silver is worth 250,000 francs. Meanwhile, and now I take blame to myself, no one thought of testing the find, even by blow with the hammer. Alas, the splendid buttons proved to be iron, containing only 2.5 grams of silver to 100 kilograms.

I can afford to make merry on the absurd mistake which at the time filled the camp with happiness. The Jebel al-Fahisat played us an ugly trick, yet it is not the less a glorious, metalliferous block and I am sure of its future.

The rest of our time at Machnarr was given to the study of this discovery. The Great Quartz Wall, or Vane, runs nearly due north and south with a dip of 5 degrees west. It has pierced the cyanide, forming a sheet down one peak, spanning a second, and finally appearing in an isolated knob that bore from the apex 215 degrees magnetic.

The upper part, like that of the Jebel al-Abyaz, is apparently sterile. At a lower horizon it becomes panache, and at last almost all is iridescent. In fact, it is the Fion Hossein, still richer in veins and geodes. The fillet and fibrils of dust are exposed to sites in the flanks, and near the base of the great quartz vein we should never have been able to remove the barren upper capping.

Everyday's work brought with it some novelty. The Jebel al-Murrah, the centre or focus of the formation, was found to push out veins to the north, extending within a few yards of the Wadi Makna's mouth. Here, however, the quartz embedded in a grey granite appears cupriferous, producing fine grey copper, and the same is the case to the east of the Fahisat block.

Other green-tinged veins were found bearing 205 degrees magnetic from our camp. There is also a quartz hill whose valley drain, about a mile and a third long, leads down to the sea, about two minutes' walk south of the southern clump of tabernacles occupied by the Macknawys. The dust is richest, as usual, at the walls where the vein is in immediate contact with the heat-altered granites, whose red variety, containing very little mica, becomes quasi-cyanitic.

Certain of the exhibition thought that the Fahisat showed signs of having been worked by the ancients. My eyes could see nothing of the kind, and here, as in other parts of our strange country, there is a medley, a confusion of different formations. On February 2nd, the day before we left Machna, the Arabs brought in heavy masses of purple-black metalliferous rock scattered over the gorges and valleys south of the Jebel al-Fahisat, while others declared that they could point out a vein in situ.

our engineer declared it to be argentiferous galena but it proved to be magnetic iron his assays were of the rudest he broke at least one crucible per day lamenting the while that he had been supplied with english articles instead of crusade de bogogni

and no wonder. He treated them by a strong blast and a furious coal fire without previous warming. His muffle was a wreck, and such by degrees became the condition of all his apparatus. However, as we sought, so we found, hardly a Badawi lad in camp, but unpouched some form of metallic specimens. The sheikhs declared that the wealth of Karun must have been dug here, and I vainly told them that the place of punishment of Karun

Qara'a, Dathan and Ebrahim is still shown by Christians in the convent of Mount Sinai. On January 28th, after a ruddy and cloudy sunset, El Ely, the Aqaba wind beginning at 11pm, gave us a taste of its quality.

These northers are the tyrants of the gulf, which comparatively unbroken by capes and headlands, allows them all their own way, carrying a strong swell and at times huge waves to meet the tide inflowing from the Red Sea. The storm began with a rush and a roar as if it came from above. The gravel striking the canvas sounded like hail or heavy raindrops. It then kicked down at one blow the two large tents. They had been carefully pitched above the reach of the water when wind only was to be guarded against.

Fortunately, most of our goods were packed, in expectations of embarking on the morrow, but the fall broke all the breakables that were not under cover, and carried newspaper and pamphlets, including, again, alas, the Rousseau Pentagonal of Elie de Beaumont over the plains southwards, till arrested by the heights of Jebel el-Fahisat. This bore, as it would be called on the Adriatic, makes the air exceptionally cold and raw before dawn. It appears to abate between noon and sunset,

and it is most violent at night. It either sensibly increases or lessens in turbulence with moonrise and usually lasts from three to seven days. We rigged up one of the native huts with the awning of a tent till it looked very like a gypsy dwelling and in patience we possessed our souls grumbling horridly like Britons.

Poor Captain Mohammed of the Mokhbir, who had already escaped one shipwreck, was in mortal terror. He at once got steam up and kept his weary vigil all night. He was perfectly safe, as the northern reef under which the Sambuk Musahil rode easily as if in smooth water, and the headland, Razal Tara, formed a complete defence against the Aili, while a natural pier to the south would have protected him from its complement, the Asyab or Southeaster.

But it would have been very different had the storm veered to the west and the terrible Rabi set in. The port of Machna, which had been described in The Gold Mines of Midian, can hardly be called safe. On the other hand, its floor has not been surveyed and a single bryze lame seawards would convert it into a dock.

i should propose a galgiente a floating breakwater tree trunks in bundles strongly bound together with iron cramps and bands connected by stout rings and staples and made fast by anchors to the bottom and at any rate on the synaetick shore opposite at the distance of thirteen knots there is as will appear an admirable harbour of refuge

Next day the cloud veil lifted and the mountains of Sinai and Midian, which before had been hidden as if by a November fog in London, again stood out in sharp and steely blue. I proposed to board the gunboat. Afloat we should have been much more comfortable than ashore in the raw, high and dusty Leiden wind. The Egyptian officers, however, quoted the unnautical Falaad's favourite sores,

El Baro bir li ahlihi, earth is a blessing to those upon her. Zetat el jimal, wa la tasbi el samak, the roar of the camels and not the prayer of the fish. And the sailors sang, Kaub el bar, wa la sabar el bahr, better be a dog ashore than a lion afloat.

The public voice was decidedly against embarking, so two more days of gale were spent in adding to our collection of mineralogy. On the other hand, the Sayyid and the three Sheikhs were anxious for a speedy return to Al Mawila, where the Hajj caravan was expected on Safar 10th, equals February 11th, and where their presence would be officially required.

On the last day of January, I boated off to the Mokhbir several tonnes of the specimens collected during the Northern March, including the iron, the sulphur and the fine white gypsum, crystalline and amorphous, which forms the Raghamat Makna. Lieutenant Youssef and Monsieur Philippine were directed to remain in camp until they should have collected and placed upon the seashore, ready for embarkation on our return, one tonne of white quartz.

three tons or one cubic meter of the iridescent variety and four boxes half full of the silver brackets iron dust whose veins and pockets seem the negro they were also to wash in the cradle two tons of the pounded cascalho conglomerate gravel one ton of the green yellow claritic or serpentine sand forming the undersurface of the wadi makna which used to four gerbers or water sacks and five tons of the dark metal not argentiferous galena

after that they were to visit the northern sulphur hill estimate its contents trace if possible its connection with adjoining formations map the country and prospect for wood water and harbour lastly they were ordered to march with the whole camp including our mules upon el moela and there to await my return

The three normal days of El Éli had come and gone. Still the Fortuna did not fall. The water, paved with dark slate and domed with an awning of milky white clouds, patched here and there with rags and shreds of black wintry mist that poured westwards from the Suez Gulf, showed us how ugly the Bracat Acabar can look. As in Iceland also, the higher rose the barometer, the higher rose the norther, the latter being a cold, dry wind in

is consequently a heavy wind, and when the sky was comparatively clear and blue, the display of Surrey was noticeable. In some places they formed filmy crosses and thready lozenges, in others the rack fell into the shape of the letter Z, and from the western horizon the cold clouds shot up thin rays with a common centre hid behind the mountains of Sinai, affecting all the airs of the sun.

before leaving mcnagh i must give an account of its peculiar tribe concerning which the gold mines of midian contained sundry inaccuracies these men are not the pauper descendants of the wealthy midianites they cannot boast of ancient race or of noble blood and their speech differs in nothing from that of the arabs around them

There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that they represent in any way the ancient Nabataeans. In features, complexion and dress, they resemble the half-settled Bedouin around them, and like these, they show a kind of connection with the Sinaitic tribes. The Magani, to whom only the southern clump of huts at Machna belongs, call themselves Fawaida, Zubeda and Ramazani, after families of the Johini stock, and the Fawaida have

by descent, some title to the name. They are, however, considered to be Khadamin serviles, like the Huttam race, by their neighbours, who give tile following account of their origin. An Egyptian silk seller, who accompanied the Hajj caravans, happened to fall asleep at Khuzib Baha, between the stations of Enuna and Mughal Shoaib. His companions went their ways, and he, like a bean-eater, as he was, fearing to follow them alone, made for Makna, having married and settled there, and seeing, in the fertility of the soil,

A prospective speck, he sent to his native country for falahin, cultivators and peasants who were collected from every part of the Faroe land and its neighbourhood. The newcomers were compelled to pay one half of their harvest by way of al-akhawa, the brother tax, in token of subjugation to the beni uqbar, the owners of the soil. They have gradually acquired milk, or legal title, to the ground. According to some, they first settled at Makna in the days of the beni Amr, whom they subsequently accompanied to the Hizma when flying from the victorious Musalima.

After peace was patched up, they were compelled to make over one-fourth of the date harvest as al-Akhawar to the Imran Huwaitat and to the Ma'aza, whilst the Taghi Ghat Huwaitat claimed a burash or mat of fine reeds as a pull-tax from every head of man. Under these hard conditions, they are left unmolested and everything taken from them is restored by the sheikhs who receive tribute. They have no chief, although one Salim ibn Juwafili claims the title.

Before 1866 the Magani numbered about 100 tents

The Wadi Makna was then, they say, a garden and its cultivators were remarkable for their goodness and hospitality to strangers. But in that year, a feud with the Beni Okhbar was excited as often happens by the Beli Tetarima Koza. The women quarrelled with one another saying, thy husband is a slave to my husband and so forth. The little tribe, hoisting two flags of red and white calico with green palm fronds for staves, dared the foe to attack it.

After a loss of four killed and sundry wounded, all ran away manfully, leaving their goods at the mercy of the conqueror. Sheikh Hassan al-Qukbi was assisted by the Ma'aza in looting the Magani huts and in carrying off the camels, while Sheikh Faraj vainly attempted conciliation. Shortly afterwards, the Mahnawis went in on body to beg aid from Hamad al-Safi, Sheikh of the Turabin tribe, which extends from Gaza westward to Egypt.

Marching with a host of armed followers, he took possession of the palm huts belonging to the Beni Akbar when the owners fled in turn, leaving behind their women and children. Farij hastened from Enuna to settle the quarrel and at last the Sufi said to him, whilst I protect the Magani, do thou protect the Beni Akbar.

whereupon the latter returned from their mountain refuge to almohela the magani at the present time are mostly camped about enuna and only some fifteen head old men women and boys who did not take part in the fight and who live by fishing remain at makna under the protection of the beni ukba hence the waters are waste and the fields are mostly unhoed

Such is the normal condition of Arabia and the Arabs. What one does, the other undoes. What this creates, that destroys. Professor Palmer tells us,

The travellers' experience, however, was chiefly of the Tuara or Sinaitic Bedouin, a race which, bad as bad could be in the early quarter of the present century, has been thoroughly tamed and cowed by the fear of Allah and the Consul, and the curse pronounced by the Jews against their brother Ishmael, his hand shall be against every man, etc., must, as was known even in the days of Gibbon, be taken with many a grain of salt."

Yet the Bedouin of Midian have to late years been a turbulent mixed multitude and are ready to become troublesome again. It is only by building forts and by holding the land militarily that the civilised can hope to tame this vermin. I repeat, however, my conviction that the charming McNar Valley is fated to see happy years and that the wild man who, when ruled by an iron hand, is ever ready to do a fair day's work for a fair wage, especially if he is not,

especially victuals will presently sit under the shadow of his own secular vines and fig trees about midnight on February 2nd the tempestuous northerly gale which had now lasted four days and five nights ceased almost suddenly the signs of the approaching calm were the falling of the mercury the increased warmth of the atmosphere and the shifting of the wind towards the east all hailed the change with joy

The travellers looked forward to ending their peregrinations while the voyagers, myself included, hoped safely to steam round the Gulf El Aqaba and to trace as correctly as possible the extent, the trend and the puissance of the quartz formations. At Cairo, Mr Consul Rogers told me he had found them in large quantities feigning the red grits of Petra and I thought it possible that the white stone may extend under the waters of Aqaba into the peninsula of Sinai. End of chapter 6

CHAPTER VII. CRUISE FROM MACNAR TO EL ACABAR.

This Red Sea in the land of Edom is still, as Wellstead entitles it, a vast and solitary gulf. It bears a quaint resemblance to the eastern fork of the northern Adriatic, the Quirnurno, whose name expresses its terrible storms, while the Suez Branch shows the longer stretch of the Triestein bifurcation.

Yam-elath, or Eloth, as the Hebrews called Al-Aqaba, has, by the upheaval of the land, lost more of its fair proportions than its western sister. It was at one time the embouchure of the Jordan extending up the Wadi al-Arabah to the Asphaltite Lake, or Dead Sea, before the former became, so to speak, a hill, and the latter a hole.

This view dates from olden times. It is assumed that the rabbit was a rapid, that it was a sloth that walked while a descent formed the mammoth, and that the Jordan was cast into the Hellenic Gulf by Elath, that is, into the Red Sea, before the destruction of Sodom.

For the latter date, we have only to read, "...when a movement of depression sank the lower Jordan Valley and its present reservoirs, the Tiberias Lake and the Dead Sea to their actual level. There is nothing marvellous nor unique in the feature, as it appears to those suffering from that strange malady wholly land on the brain. The Oxus and the Caspian show an identical formation, only the sinking has been on a smaller scale."

well said was unfortunate both in his weather and in his craft to encounter a sea of breakers and northerly gales with a high and dangerous swell in a wretched bugalaa i sambuuk and in that perfect tub the palinurus was somewhat like tempting providence if such operation be possible

No wonder that in this gulf, in a course of only 90 miles, the nautical mishaps were numerous and varied. The surveyor, however, neglected a matter of the highest interest and importance, namely to ascertain whether there be any difference of level between the heads of the sewers and the Aqaba waters. The vicinity of continuous maritime chains, varying from 6 to nearly 9,000 feet, suggests an amount of attraction theoretically sufficient to cause a sensible difference of plane,

it would be well worth while to run two lines of survey one from al akabar to suez and the other down the eastern flank of the synecdoche peninsula the mokhbir like the palinuras promised a certain amount of excitement her boiler i have said was honeycombed it was easy to thrust one's fist through it

Mr David De Guede, the engineer who on occasion worked 36 hours at a stretch, had applied for 60 new tubes and he wanted 150. We began with 240. We lost, when in the Gulf, from 3 to 9 per diem, a total of 75. And the work of the engine room and the ship's carpenters consisted in plugging fractures with stays, plates and wedges.

Presently, the steam gauge, or manometer, gave way, making it impossible to register pressure. The combustion chamber showed a rent of 18 inches long by one wide, the result of too rapid cooling. And lastly, the donkey engine struck work. Under these happy circumstances, bursting was not to be expected. Breaking down was a regular collapse, which would have left us like a log upon the stormy waves.

a new boiler might have cost perhaps nine hundred pounds and the want of one daily endangered a good ship which could not be replaced for nine thousand pounds i therefore determined upon a sefer khorea that is steaming by day and anchoring at night in some snug bay it was also agreed nemcon to till the sambuq el musahil in order that should accidents happen it might in turn act tug to the steamer or even at a pinch serve us as a lifeboat

Nothing becomes Mackenna better than the view on leaving it. A varied and attractive picture, this, with the turquoise blue of the deep water, the purple and leek green tints of the surely and sandy little port, and the tawny shore dotted by six distinct palm tufts.

there are outliers on the main line yon flood of verdure climbing up and streaming down from the high dry and barren banks of our inacious drift heaped up and filmed over by the wind and lastly surging through its narrow gate with the clifflets of conglomerate forming the old coast

At the bluff headland of the Raz al-Tara, to the north of the harbour, and behind it the Raghamat Makna, the greenish-yellow flat-backed horse of Madin, which, shimmering in the sunset with a pearly luster, forms the best of landmarks. Finished to the south of the wadi with the quaint, chopping outlines of the Jebel al-Fahisat, resembling from afar a huge alligator lying on the water, with the similar but lower forms to the north of the valley, both reflected in the Jebel al-Hamra, the Red Hills.

whose curtains of green-black trap are broken by sheets of dull, dead-white plaster. Cap the hole with the mighty double coin of Gypsius Jebel al-Kharaj, buttressing the eastern flank of its valley, and with the low, dark, metal-raveted hills of the Kalb al-Nakhla, a copy of the Fahisat. Throw in the background, slowly rising as you seed from the shore, a curtain of platonic peaks and buttresses.

cones, coins, cupolas, parrot beaks, with every trick of shape, from the lumpy zahd to the buttressed and pinnacled urnub, with every shade of mountain tint between lapis lazuli and plum purple. Dome the whole with that marvellous transparent sky, the ocean of the air that spreads loveliness over the rugged cheek of the desert, and you have a picture which, though distinctly Arabian, you can hardly expect to see in Arabia.

from the offing also we note how the later formations granite and cyanite seamed with a network and often topped by cones of porphyritic trap have upthrust pierced and isolated the older secondaries we trace this huge deposit of sulphates and carbonates of lime from the southern wadi hams through the islets at the mouth of burqat akkabar all along the shore of north midian

Here it crosses diagonally the northern third of the Aqaba Gulf and forms the northeastern base of the Sinaitic Peninsula, whilst eastward it stretches inland as far as Mare Shueb. The general disposition suggests that before the upheaval of the Ghats, the Jibbel el-Tahama, this vast gypsious sheet, was a plain and plateau covering the whole country, till a movement of depression caused by the upheaval of the Igneous Mountains sank in it the Gulf of Aqaba.

At present, the surface is here flat, bare, hilly, like huge billows breaking mostly to the north and reaching an altitude of 1200 feet above the surface. Hence, the lines stretching north-south, the Fahisat, the Red Hills and the Kalb el-Nakhla look like so many volcanic island reefs floating in a sea of greenish-yellow secondaries.

Like the old Irish post-horse, the difficulty and danger of our kettle consisted in starting it. Two tubes at once burst, and a new hole yawned in the boiler. Moreover, our anchor had been thrown out in a depth of 73 feet. Enfant. At 9am, February 3rd, we stood straight for the Sinaitic shore, distant 13 miles, direct geographical, and in three hours we made the Sharm, Marsa, or Minat al-Dahab, the Golden Anchorage Cove or Porte.

Another hour was spent steaming southwards to the dock harbour, wrongly so-called in the charts. The pilots and the many sambuks that take refuge in it know the place only as Minat Jainai. The northern bailet, preferred when southerly winds blow, is simply the embouchure of the Wadi Dahab Fiumara of Gold. The name is properly applied to the sub-maritime section of the valley draining the eastern flanks of the so-called Mount Sinai.

This great watercourse breaks through the Ghats which, always fringing similar peninsulas, peak to the south. It reaches the gulf at a shallow sag marked by a line of palms. The centre of the three, they are fed by the several Nillas and are watered with the brackish produce of sundry wells. The Stacio Malafide is defended to the north by a short sand spit and a submerged reef and southwards by a projection of sandstone conglomerate.

The latter, running from northeast to southwest, subtends this part of the coast and serves to build up the land. After a few years, the debris swept down by the watercourse will warp up the shallows, dividing shore from outlier. Such, in fact, seems to be the general origin of these sandpits, beginning as coralline reefs. They have been covered with conglomerates and converted into terra firma by the rubbish shot out by the whitey-mouths.

The southern port, Ginae, is formed by a bend in the reef which sweeps round from east to southwest like a scorpion's tail. The natural seawall, at once dangerous and safety-giving, protects to the south and southeast diabolitus of black rock visible only at high tide. Inshore, the sickle-shaped breakwater runs by east to southwest, becoming a sandy hook and enclosing a basin whose depth ranges from 7 to 12 fathoms.

Its approach from the south is clean, and the western opening is protected by the tall screen of coast cliffs, the Jebel al-Jinai, whose deep black, porphyritic gorge seemingly prolongs that of Midianite Tayyib-ism. This is a section of the Jebel al-Samri, the coast range which extends as far north as the Wadi Watir. The dock port, so useful when the terrible norther blows, has an admirable landmark, visible even from Sinaphir Island, and conspicuous at the entrance of the gulf.

where the sandy slopes of south-eastern sinai land end appears a large white blot apparently supporting a block built like a bastion upon a tall hill of porphyritic trap

We call this remnant of material harder than the rest Berjal Dahab, the Tower Hill of Dahab. I have been minute in describing the Golden Harbour. Scant justice has been done to it by the hydrographic chart and it will prove valuable when the Machna mines are opened. Ahmed Kaptan vainly attempted soundings. He was too ill to work. Wellstead's identification of the site with Ezion Geber 2-9 and the reef with a rock ledge which wrecked Jehoshaphat's fleet has one great objection.

no ruins are known to exist near it the formation of this part of sinai as far as we can see from the shore reflects in wilder forms and more abrupt lines the opposite coast of midian there is however the important difference that the secondaries and the quartz veins there so important are here wanting the skeletons of mountain and hill appear as if prolonged under water

The Riddesionite is diked and veined by the familiar network of green-black porphyritic trap. The fields are disposed in parallels striking north-south with a little easting. The dip is westerly about 35 degrees magnetic and the thickness extends to hundreds of feet, often forming a foundation for the upper cliff.

The subaerial parts are the same warty and pimply growth which appears on the other side. Nothing could be more wearisome to the alpine climber than such a country. He would scale the peaks and ridges for 50 feet to descend 30 on the other side and the frequent wadis ankle deep in loose sand generally end in steep stony couloirs.

The watercourses, whose broad mouths are scattered with thin green, contain pebbles and rolled quartz, including fine specimens of the crystallised variety. We landed after an hour's row in the gig at the central or main line of Palms, and on the banks of Wadi Dahab, here a full mile wide, we found the works of man, like those of nature, a copy of McNarr.

The date trees and clumps are hedge-closed. Two scatters of ushash, or tabernacles, show round towers of rough stone, broken and patched with palm front, and further north of the Golden Valley, a few old Arab graves have been weathered into mere heaps of large stones. These are the Qubir al-Nasara, Nazarene's graves of Burkhart, a name apparently forgotten by the present generation.

We vainly sought and asked after ruins. Of old, however, the Zahab might have served to disembark cargo, which, by taking the land route northwards, as the Christian pilgrims still do from El Nuebi, would avoid the dangerous headwaters of El Aqaba. Nor could we believe with Pococ that the place derived its name from the mica shining like gold. His theory is stultified by the fact that mica is by no means a prominent feature, even had the ancients been so ignorant as to be deceived by it.

The people were by no means communicative. An elderly man with a red turban and sword by his side hurried away from us when we addressed him, leaving his middle-aged wife to follow with a babe on shoulder and a boy in hand. She also refused to speak, waving her hand by way of reply to every question. At last, a semi-civilised being acquainted with the convent of St Catherine, Salim bin Hussain of the Moseina tribe, satisfied her curiosity in view of tobacco and offered a rudely stuffed ibex head for a shilling. In

In the evening our fishermen visited the reef which supplied admirable rock-cord, query a bream called Sultan al-Bahar and marjan, a siana, but they neglected the fine syringa or sponges which here grow two feet long. The night was dark and painfully still, showing naught but the youngest of moons and the gloomiest silhouettes of spectral mountains.

We set out at 7am on the next day when an Asiab or south-easterly wind was promised by the damp air, the slaty sea and the gloomy NIMBY on the hilltops.

a small party landed after two hours steaming in search of quartz which proved to be chloritic sandstones and limestones in the broad valley they found a few mazani families with their camels sheep and goats these unfortunates had no tents sleeping under the trees they were desperate beggars and although half starved they asked an empoleon for a kid declaring that such was its price at the quarantine station of tor

Here, the errors of the hydrographic chart, which had been copied literally by the latest and best popular books such as Professor Palmer's Desert of the Exodus, began to excite our astonishment. For instance, Ras Qasr, the short one, became Ras Arsa. What a name for a headland!

A good survey will presently become a sine qua non. Unfortunately Ahmed Kaptan was suffering so much that I could not ask him to make solar observations while the rest of us had other matters in hand. It was a great disappointment where so much useful work remains to be done.

hereabouts the sterile horrors of the hideous syenitic shore seem to reach their climax the mountains become rubbish heaps without even colour to clothe their indecently nude forms and each strives with its neighbour for the prize of repulsiveness the valleys are mere dust-shunts that shoot out their rubbish stones gravel and sand in a solid flow like discharges of lava

And as Jebel Mazhafa on the opposite coast is the apex of the visible eastern Ghats, so beyond this point the cyanitic sea-chain of mountains begins to decline into mere hills, while longer sand-points project seawards. Such is the near, the real aspect of what, viewed from Machna, appears as seen in fairyland, decked and dight in heavenly hues of blue and purple and rosy light, where the bold, blear skull of the desert with golden mountains is crowned.

The first sign of a change of formation appeared near the lower southern Nwibi, the little spring, which the charts call Wasit. Here the shore shows blots of dead white and mauve red in which our engineer at once detected quartz. Seeing it prolonged in straight horizontal lines and the red overlying the white, I suspected kaolin and the normal taua coloured clays. My conjecture was confirmed on the next day.

hereabouts wellstead two one five one also remarked the colourings of the hills which resembled those of sherm some of a deep blue tinge and others streaked with a brilliant red and violet we then doubled a long sand spit running out to sea eastward and forming on the north a deep bay well protected from the souther whilst several lines of reef and shallow to the north defend it from the angry borer

This anchorage is known to the pilots as Oasit and it occupies the southern half of the bay, the northern half and its palm groves being called the Upper Noebi. About Oasit the date palms are scattered and the largest sand drifts ever threaten to bury them alive.

Behind it yawns the great gash Wadi Watir which shows its grand lines even from the opposite side of the gulf. This is the route by which the Christian pilgrims from Syria make the Sinai monastery rounding on Kamel's the northern end of Al-Akabar. The main valley receives from the north the Wadi Al Ain which can be reached in half a day. From the south distant one whole march comes the Wadi Al Hazra. This is doubtless the

the Hazareth of the Exodus, meaning the fenced enclosures of a pastoral people, and a modern traveller figures and described it as the most beautiful and romantic landscape in the desert. At least, so said the lately shipped guide, Marouk ibn Sulaim el-Muzaini.

After a run of six hours and thirty minutes, thirty miles, we cast anchor off Wysid. There was nothing to see ashore save some wretched Moseina, two males and three females, helpmates meet for them, living like savages on fish and shell mollusks, drinking brackish water and sleeping in their bush rather than taking the trouble to repair the huts. They have no sheep but a few camels and by way of boats they use catamarans composed of two palm trunks.

Their homemade hook resembles the schoolboy's crooked pin. Yet these starvelings would not fetch specimens of the white stuff distant, perhaps two direct miles of crosscut, seen near Nwibi and still visible. They also refused, without preliminary bachshish, to show or even to tell where certain ruins concerning which they spoke or romanced are found in their hills. And yet there are theologians who would raise poverty, the most demoralising of all conditions, to the rank of an ecclesiastical virtue.

At 6.30am on the next day, the Mokhbia stood eastward to avoid the northern reef. Presently we passed the Upper Niwebi, a creeklet to the north-west of Wased, with a straggling line of palms fed by the huge Wadi Muzerij. From this point to the Aqaba head all the coast is clean of man. The Jibbel el-Sanghi now becomes the Sinaitic Jibbel el-Shafar, Lipp Mountains, the latter stretching northward to the Haj Road and forming the western wall of the Arabah Valley, whose name they assume Jibbel Arabah.

The scene abruptly shifts. A mottle of clouds sheds moving shadows over the hill crests and relieves them from the appalling monotony of yesterday. Brilliant rainbow hues, red, green, mauve, purple, yellow and white clays gleam in the lowlands and form dwarf bluffs, while inland, peering above the granites, the cyanites and the porphyries of the coast, pale coins and naked cones again show the familiar secondary formation of Midianitish mackinaw.

We were not surprised to hear that sulphur had been found in the gypsums of these eastern ghats of Sinai when a Jebel al-Kibit approached by the Wadi Sawir was pointed out to us. The natural deduction is that the brimstone formation is, like the turquoise, the copper and the manganese, a continuation of the beds that gave a name to Makphaland, while the metalliferous strata round in horseshoe form the head of Al-Aqaba and run down the Arabian shore till they become parallel with those subtending the seaboard of Africa.

The view of the eastern or Midianite coast was even more varied and suggestive. Far inland and tinged light blue by distance was the sharp, jagged and saw-like crests of Al-Sharif under which the Hajj caravan wends its weary way, thus escaping the mountains which dip perpendicularly into the sea. Then come the broad and sandy slopes, here and there streaked with dark ridges, spanned by the Sultani or Sultan's High Road and stretching from the Gulf to the Inner Heights.

the latter are no longer a double parallel chain they bend from south-southeast to north-northwest and become the Jibbel el-Sharah anciently Mount Seir in fact the eastern returning wall of the great Wadi Arabah

Evidently they are primary, but a white and purple patch, visible from afar, suggested a secondary remnant. Several of the peaks, especially the blue block El Yitam, appeared to be of great height. We all remarked its towering stature and triffid headpiece, apparently upwards of 5,000 feet high, before we had heard the tail attached to it. Abreast of us and on the shore lie the large inlet and the little islet El Hameza. The surveyors have abominably corrupted it to Omider. North of it are

a palm grove lining the mouth of a broad wadi which snakes high up among the sands and stones denotes the hard station El Hagal backed by tall aranatious buttresses After six hours at 22 and a half knots we anchored in the deep channel about three quarters of a kilometre wide that separates the Sinaitic mainland from the northern one of the only two islands known in the Aqaba Gulf a scrap of rock crowned with picturesque grey ruins

the jezeret faraun of the maps the isle of pharaoh concerning whom traditions are still current it is known to the acobites only as jebel el kalah or fort hill hence el gra in labord and jezeret el kriah in

Burckhardt also mentions that the ruins are known as El Deir, the convent. This human lair is encircled by barrier reefs of coralline, broad to the southwest and large in scattered places. Eastwards they form a shallow wall-like ledge beyond which blue water at once begins. The island formation is that of the opposite coasts, Midian and Sinai, grey granite diked with decaying porphyritic trap and everywhere veined with white and various coloured quartzes.

the shape is a long oval of about three hundred and twenty by one hundred and fifty two metres a saddleback with two stony heads the higher to the north rising a hundred feet or so above sea-level pommel and cantle are connected by a low seat a few yards of isthmus and the three divisions all strongly marked bare buildings

the profile from east and west shows four groups to the extreme north a tower backed by the castle d'onjon on the knob of granite here and there scarped the works upon the thread of the isthmus and the walls and bastions crowning the southern knob which being lower is even more elaborately cut to a perpendicular

We landed upon the eastern side of the Islet Rock where the trunk of a broken mole is covered in rear by a ruined work. Here, being most liable to attack, the fortifications are strongest whereas on the west side only a single wall, now strewn on the ground with square birch at intervals, defends the little boat harbour. The latter appears at present in the shape of a fish pond measuring 60 by 40 metres, sunk below sea level, fed by percolation and exceedingly salt

to the east of this water black cineraceous earth shows where the smith has been at work we applied the coromant to sift it without other results but bits of glass copper and iron nails

The pier leads to a covered way enabling the garrison safely to circulate round the base of the islet. Behind it, a path much broken and cumbered by debris of the walls winds up the southern face of the northern hill which supports the body of the place. It meets another track from the west and a small work defends their junction. Below it, outside the walls, we found a well sunk about eight feet in the granite and cemented with fine lime, the red plaster in places remaining.

Above this pit, a mihrab or pranish fronting Mecca woods, more exactly 175 degrees magnetic, shows the now ruinous mosque. The Badawi declare that it was built by a pasha. Higher again, upon a terraplane, are lines of tanks laid out with all that lavishness of labour which distinguishes similar works in Syria. It is, however, difficult to assign any dates to these constructions.

The cisterns were explored by Mr Clark and Lieutenant Amir, who dug into and planned them. They descended by ropes, although there are two flights of steps to the west and the southwest. The tanks are built up from the base with blocks one foot nine inches long, seven inches deep of rubbish, were cleared away before reaching the floor, composed of black stones bedded in layers of cement above and below and resting upon the ground rock. The diggings yielded only big pieces of salt fallen from the walls and a broken hand mill of basalt.

The sides are supported by pilasters of cut stone and the crown by four pillars in a double row. The dividing arches, according to the plan, are not symmetrical. Hard by measuring 12 meters by 12 is the quarry whence the stone was taken and near it stands the normal Egyptian pigeon tower with its nest niches. The donjon or body is defended by an enceinte opening northwards upon a large yard where doubtless the garrison mustered and whence a flight of steps leads to the wicket.

The inside of the works shows the roofless party walls still standing and the ground is scattered over with the remains of many different races. There are drums of columns and fragments of marble pillars but no sign of an inscription. Even in the upper ramparts two epochs are distinctly traceable, the medieval and the modern. The lower ashlar, mostly yellow grid, is cut and carefully cemented. The upper part is generally of rough dry stone, the platonic formations of the islet heaped up with scanty care.

the embrasures are framed with decaying palm trunks the loopholes belong partly to the age of archery and nothing can be ruder than the battlements placed close together as if to be manned by bowmen while in not a few places there are the remains of matting between the courses

At the highest part we found another carefully cemented sachrege or underground cistern with two sharp-topped arches divided by a tall column, saracenic certainly and not doric. Above it a circular aperture arched round with the finest bricks serves to lighten the superstructure. It communicates to the north with a hammam whose plan is easily traced by the double flues and earthenware tubes well made and mortared together. Here we found inscribed on the plaster Arona Linant

22nd March 1846. The southern nub of the islet supports similar but inferior constructions, still more ruinous withal. Its quarry is on the lower slopes and its granitic base has also been scarped seawards. Two stout walls, 12 feet thick below and six above, crossing the length of the rock from north to south, here meet in a verge which shows signs of fine tiles on an upper floor, whilst a third wall forms a southern spine bisecting the till of the jeserat. The

The castle is much more dilapidated than when sketched by Ruppel, the first Frank who visited Alakabar in 1826. His illustration, page 214 of Ruinen auf der Insel Amrag, shows a single compact building in good preservation. The tower's been round when all are square, and it is garnished with the impossible foreground and background of this epoch, the former enlivened with a Noah's Ark camel being placed quite close when it is distant some 10 miles.

In the German naturalist's time, the now desolate island was occupied by the Emradi, a tribe which he suspected to be Jewish and of which he told the queerest tales. I presume they are Imran Huetat of El Hagel and his Ma. Wellstead's short description, 2.9, is still correct, as in 1838.

The castle is evidently European, built during the days when the Crusaders held Al-Aqaba, but it probably rests upon Roman ruins, and the latter, perhaps upon Egyptian, remains of far older date. It protected one section of the oldest overland route when the islet formed the key of the gulf head.

It subsequently became an eyrie, whence its robber knights and barons, including, possibly, John the Christian ruler of Aqaba, A.D. 630, and, long after him, madcap Renaud de Chatillon, A.D. 1182, could live comfortably and sally out to plunder merchants and pilgrims.

The Saracenic buildings may date, as the popular superstition has it, from the reign of Salah al-Din Saladin, who in AD 1167 cleared this country of the infidel invader by carrying ships on camelback from Cairo. Later generations of thieves, pirates and fishermen naturally made it their refuge and abode. I hardly anticipate for it great things in the immediate future, although it has been proposed for a coal depot.

After a day given to tube tinkering with tompions, stays, plugs, plates and wedges to the distraction of the ship's carpenter and blacksmith, steam was coaxed up and at 9.15am February 7th we ran northwards through the deep narrow channel rounding the upper end of the pharaonic islet. Here the encircling wall is defended by two square burge to the northeast and the northwest flanking what is probably the main entrance.

On the Sinaitic mainland to port, the broad mouth of the Wadi al-Masri leads to the Nakab, the rocky pass which, so much dreaded till repaired by Abbas Pasha, is popularly said to be described in Al-Aqaba the steep. The Bedouin, however, declare that the locale is so-called because the gulf here heals, yakab al-bahr, that is, comes to an end.

At the head of the sea, the confused mass of the Sinaitic mountains range themselves in line to the west, fronting its sister wall, the Grand Bloc El Shara, or Seer, while in the middle lies the southern section of the Hara, the noble and memorial Wadi al-Akabar, supposed to have given a name to Arabia.

the surface water still rolls down it after rains and the mirage veiling the valley soil prolongs the gulf waters far to the north their bed in the old geologic ages the view was charming to us for the first time since leaving sewers we saw the contrast of perpendicular and horizontal of height and flat

nothing could be more refreshing more gladdening to the eye after niente che montagna as the poor italian described the morea than the soft sweeps and the level lines of the hollow plain it was enjoyable as a heavy shower after an egyptian summer

On the next day also, the play of light and shade and hide-and-seek of sunray and water cloud gave the viewer cachet of its own. I'm sorry to see that the scientific geologist, Mr John Milne FGS, proposing to cut through the two to 500 feet of elevation which separate the Gulf from the Dead Sea some 1300 feet below water level.

Does he reflect that he simply proposes to obliterate the whole Lower Jordan, to bury Tiberias and its lake about 800 feet under the waves? In fact, to overwhelm half the Holy Land in a brand new 19th century deluge, the Deluge of Milne.

all were delighted at having reached our northernmost point without another visit from el ali after one hour and thirty-five minutes seven miles the mohabeer anchored in twelve fathoms of water a couple of hundred yards off the fort and its dependent group of brown-grey mud buildings half concealed by the luxurious palms

the roads are safe enough here the north wind has not yet gained impetus the southeaster is bluffed off by a long point and in only the strongest khabi or westers ships must run for refuge under the cliffs of sinai this is not the place to enter the history of elath elat elah elana

Aqaba or Aqabat-e-Lah, Robinson 1.250-254 and a host of others give ample and reliable details. Suffice it to say that the site is mentioned in the Wanderings Deuteronomy 2.8 which must not be confounded with the Exodus. It is subsequently connected with the gold fleet 1 Kings 9.26 etc and conquered by Razin king of Syria BC 740. It was permanently lost to the Jews 2 Kings

16.6. Under the Romans, this great station upon the overland between the southernmost Nabataean port, Luque, Come, and Petra, the western capital, was a presidium held by the 10th legion, and a highway connected it with Gaza, measuring 120 direct miles, when the isthmus of Suez numbers only 95. In Christian times it had a prince and a bishop, and under Muhammad and the early Muslims it preserved an importance which lasted till the day of the crusaders.

Al-Makrizi describes its ruins and here places the northern frontier of the Hejaz. In his day Madian was thus a section of the Tehamat al-Hajaz, the maritime regions of the Muslims' holy land.

A group of camels had gathered on the shore and inland lay a mob of pilgrims, the Hajj al-Maghribah. Numbering some 3,000 Northwest Africans, an equally large division had already proceeded them to Suez. Letters from Egypt assured us that cholera had broken out at Mecca and Jeddah, killing in both places 98 per diem.

Here the pilgrims swore by their Allah that all were and ever had been in perfect health. It is every man's business to ignore the truth, to hide the sick and to bury the dead out of sight.

Hard swearing, however, did not prevent the Hajj undergoing a long quarantine before entering Suez. The English journals had reported another disaster: "Now that Sultan's power is collapsing, the most powerful Bedouin tribes are rising because their subsidies are withheld. For weeks the great pilgrim traffic of autumn was arrested by them and even between Medina and Mecca the road is unsafe. Of this I could hear nothing."

we awaited on board the departure of the pauper and infected mugrebins when the place was clear we fired a gun and after an answer of three i received the visits of the fort officials they were civility itself

they immensely admired our two splendid buttons of poor iron and they privily remarked with much penetration that the colour was that of brass they were in truth far wiser than we had been with them came mohammed ibn jad not ijat el alawi of the el aweilin huwetat who styles himself sheikh of el akbar

He is remarkable for frank countenance, pleasant manners and exceeding greed. He was gorgeously arrayed in an overall abaya of red silk and gold thread , covering a similar cloak of black wool. Besides which, a long-sleeved Egyptian kaftan, striped stuff of silken wool, invested his cotton kamis and libars or bag breeches. To his akal of white fleecy wool hung a talisman, his khuf were of red morocco and his sword scabbard was covered with the same material.

The Arab ever loves scarlet and all varieties of the sanguine hue are as dear to him as to the British soldier.

We held sundry long confabs with Sheikh Mohammed who seemed to know the neighbourhood unusually well. He declared that there were ruins but no trees at Ain al-Ghadyan, distant one day's march up the Wadi al-Arabah and lying near the western wall. This is the place first identified by Robinson who says nothing about the remains with Ezion Geber while Dean Stanley, Sinai etc. page 85 opines that we have no means of fixing the position of the giant's shoulder blade.

josephus antiquities eight six four places it near elana and the present distance from the sea like that of herupolis q sheikh al adjud from suez may show the rise of the wadi al araba within historic times

The Sheikh assured us that Maru was to be found everywhere among the hills east of Al-Aqaba and Mr Milne, Beak, page 405, brought from the very summit of the true Mount Sinai, Jebel al-Yitm, a fine piece of quartz, the same kind of stone as the Brazilian pebbles of which make the best spectacles.

We carried off a specimen of native copper from the Sinaitic Jebel in Wadi Radadi, some six hours to the northwest of the fort. It is found strewed upon the ground, but not in veins. The stone looked so new that we concluded it to be work of later generations, and the traces of smelting furnaces at Old Elath confirmed the idea.

Sheikh Mohammed, who boasted that his tribe could mount 500 horses, by which, understand five, offered his safeguard to the Hizmar three easy marches, without pass or climax, up the wider Yitam to the east and beyond the range Al-Sharah. He made the region begin northwards at one day south of Al-Ma'an, the fort lying to the east-southeast of Petra, and he confirmed the accounts of Mabrouk, the guide, who was never tired of expatiating upon its merits.

The fountains flow in winter. In summer the wells are never dry. The people, especially the Huetat, are kind and hospitable. Sheep are cheap as dirt. At Jebel Saur, a Maghrabi magician raised a kidur dahab, golden pot, but his incense filling at the critical moment, it sank before yielding its treasures.

"'Pointing north-eastwards to the majestic pile in the Shara or Seir Mountains, "'the Jebel al-Yitim, a corruption of al-Yitim, "'the Sheikh told us a tale that greatly interested us. "'It appears, I have said, a remarkable formation "'from whose group of terminal domes and pinnacles "'the

The tomb of Aaron on Mount Horez, they say, visible, and it is certainly the highest visible peak of the Grand Wall that forms the right bank of the Wadi Yitam. Thus it is but one of a long range, and the Bedouin visit it to make sacrifice, according to universal custom, at the tomb of a certain Sheikh Bakir.

Here, some years ago, came an old man and a young man in a steamer, erin, belonging to His Highness the Khareev. The former told the Arabs that in his book the height was called the Jebel al-Nur, Mountain of Light, a title which apparently had first applied to the Jebel al-Auz, and the latter climbed the mountaintop. After that, they went their way.

I quite agree with my lamented friend Dr Beek that it is enormous blunder to transfer Midian, the east country, to the west of Al-Arabah and to place it south of the south country, El Negev, Genesis 21. I own that it is ridiculous to make the lawgiver lead his fugitives into a veritable cul-de-sac, then a centre of Egyptian conquest. Evidently we have still to find the true Mount Sinai, if at least it not be a myth, pure and simple. The

The profound Egyptologist Dr Heinrich Bruch-Bey observes that the vulgar official height lies to the south of and far from the line taken by the Bene Israel and that the papyri show no route leading to it, whilst many have remarked that the Sinai of the Exodus is described as a single isolated mountain or hill, not as one projection from a range of heights.

I would also suggest that the best proof of how empirical is the actual identification will be found in the fact that Jews, except only the Reverend Joseph Wolfe, 1821, have never visited nor made pilgrimages to what ought to be one of their holiest of holy places.

This crucial point has been utterly neglected by the officers of the Ordnance Survey of Sinai. It is evident that Jebel Serbal dates only from the early days of Coptic Christianity, that Jebel Musa, its Greek rival, rose after the visions of Helena in the 4th century, whilst the building of the convent by Justinian belongs to AD 527.

Ras Sussafar, its rival to the north, is an affair of yesterday and may be called the invention of Robinson and Jebel Katerina to the south is the property of Ruppel. Thus, the oft-quoted legends of the Sinaitic Arabs are mere monkish traditions adopted by Ishmaelitic ignorance.

The great lawgiver probably led his horde of fugitive slaves over the plains of Al-Negab and Al-Tih north of the so-called Sinaitic mountain blocks, marching in small divisions like those of a modern Badawi tribe, and we know from the latest surveys that the land, now alternately a fiery or frozen wilderness, was once supplied with wood and water. The true Mount Sinai is probably some unimportant elevation in the desert named by moderns after their wanderings.

Dr Beek, I am persuaded, is right in denying that Mount Sinai occupies the site at present assigned to it, but I cannot believe that he has found it in the Jebel al-Yitam nel-Aqaba. His Mount Ba'akhir is evidently a corruption of the wali on the summit, Sheikh Ba'akhir, a common Arab name. His Mountain of Light is a term wholly unknown to the Arabs, except so far as they would assign the term to any saintly place.

The sounds heard in the mountains like the firing of a cannon is a legend applied to two other neighbouring places. All the Bedouins still sacrifice at the tombs of their santons, and the little white building which covers the reputed tomb of Eran sheep are slaughtered and boiled in a huge black cauldron. The pile of large rounded boulders bearing cut Sinaitic inscriptions, page 423, are clearly Wusum. These tribal marks, which the highly imaginative Monsieur de Salcy calls planetary signs, are found throughout Midian.

The name of the wadi is, I have said, not El-Itham but El-Yitam, a very different word. Lastly, the mountain Er-Tur, or Er-Tur, page 404, is probably a corruption of Al-Tur, El-Hizmar, the inaccessible wall of the plateau, which Dr. Beek calls Jebel-Hizmar. My old friend, with his usual candor and straightforwardness, honestly admitted that he had been egregiously mistaken with respect to the volcanic character of the true Mount Sinai.

But without the eruption, the fire and smoke theory, what becomes of this whole argument? Save for the death of my friend, I should have greatly enjoyed the comical side of this subject, the horror and disgust with which he, one of the greatest of geographical innovators, regards a younger rival theory, the exodus innovation of Dr. Heinrich Brüschbe. The latter is the first who has rescued the March of the Children of Israel from a condition of mere guesswork described by the Reverend Mr. Holland.

Under the guidance of our new acquaintances, we rode to the site of Elath, which evidently extended all round the Gulf Head from north-east to north-west. Linent and Laborde, Voyage de l'Arabie, Petre, etc., Paris, 1830, confine it to the western shore near the mouth of Wadi el-Arabah and make Aision Geber to face it, as suggested by the writings of the Hebrews.

Disembarking at the northern palm clump, we inspected Eldar, the old halting place of the pilgrim caravan before New Aqaba was founded.

the only ruins are large blocks under the clearest water and off a beach of the softest sand which would make the fortune of a bathing-place in europe further eastward lies an enclosed date orchard called el hamam the two pits in it are said to be wells but i suspect the treasure seeker inland and to the north rise the mounds and tumuli the sole remains of ancient ilath once the pause of petra which is distant only two dromedary marches

during rain floods the site is an island to the west flows the surface water of the wadi al arabah and eastward the drainage of the wadi yitm has dug a well-defined bed a line of larger heaps to the north shows where according to the people ran the city wall finding it thickly strewed with scoria old and new i decided that this was the siagah or smith's quarter

Between it and the sea the surface is scattered with glass, shards and slag. I inquired in vain for written stones and for the petroleum reported to exist in the neighbourhood.

Sheikh Mohammed declared that of old a chain stretched from the Pharaonic island castle to the Jebel al-Buraj or Qasr al-Badawi on the Midianite shore. This chain is at Leok Qaman of Eastern legends. The Badawi's castle is mentioned by Robinson and Burkhardt, Syria, page 510, as lying one hour south of Al-Aqaba. Moreover, the Wadi Yitam, whose upper bed shows two ruins, was closed at the narrow above the mouth by a fortified wall of stone and lime, thus cutting off all intercourse with the interior.

The Bedouin declare it to be the work of a King Hadid or Ayan who thus kept out the Bani Hilal of Al-Najd. We were shown large earth dams thrown across the embouchure of the torrent to prevent the floods injuring the palm groves of New Aqaba. These may date from ancient days when the old city here extended its southeastern suburb. As usual they have become a cemetery, modern and Muslim, and on the summit of the largest the holy Sheikh al-Jami still names his ruined tomb.

Walking round the eastern bay, where the ubiquitous black sand striped the yellow shore, we observed that the tide here rises only one foot, whereas at Suez it may reach a metre and a half to seven feet. According to the chart, the springs attain four feet at Omida or El Hameza, some 19 direct knots to the south, and in the Sham Yaha we found them about one metre. Presently, we entered by wooden doors with locks and keys, the carefully kept palm groves, walled with pisé and dry stone.

Wells were being sunk and a depth of nine to ten feet gave tolerably sweet water. Striking the broad northern trail which leads to the wider Yitam and to the upper El Arabá, still a favourite camping ground of the tribes, we reached the modern settlement which has something of the aspect of a townlet, not composed like Al-Mu'ayla of a single house. The women fled at our approach as we threaded the alleys formed by the mud tenements.

The fort is usually supposed to have been built by Sultan Selim I in AD 1517 or three years before his death after he had subdued the military aristocracy of the Mamluks who had ruled Egypt for three centuries. Much smaller than that of El Mueyla it is a normal affair and on sand one striped red and white curtains flanked by four burge all circular except the new polygon to the northwest and a huge gloomy main gateway fronting north and flanked by two bastions.

On the proper right side is a circle of stone bearing, without date, the name of Sultan Selim Khan el-Fati, who first laid out the pilgrim route along the Red Sea shore. Inside the dark, cool porch, a large inscription bears the name al-Ashraf Khansur el-Ghori, the last but one of the Circassian Mamluk kings of Egypt, who was defeated and slain by the Turkish conqueror near Aleppo in AD 1501.

Above it stand two stone shields dated AH992 or AD1583-1584. In the southern wall of the courtyard is the mosque, fronted by a large deep well, dug, they say, during the building of the fort. It still supplies the whole Hajj caravan with warmish sweet water. On the ground lies a good brass gun with Arabic inscription and numerals, and the towers commanding the little kitchen gardens outside the fort wall are armed with old iron carronades.

The garrison consisting of a half dozen gunners and a few bashe bazooks looks pale, bloodless and unwholesome. The heats of summer are almost unsupportable and the akabar has the name of a "little hell". Moreover they eat, drink, smoke, sleep, chat, quarrel and never take exercise. The officers complained sadly that I had made them walk perhaps a mile around the bay head.

and yet they have within two days of sharp ride that finest of sanitaria the hizma which extends as far north and south as they pleased to go

I at once made arrangements for a dromedary post to Suez and wrote officially to Prince Hussein Pasha requesting that His Highness would exchange the Mokhbir for a steamer less likely to drown herself. Moreover, the delay at Mogher Shoeb had exhausted our resources and the expedition required a month's additional rations for men and mules. The application was, it will appear, granted in the most gracious manner with as little delay as possible and my wife, who had reached Cairo, saw that the execution of the order was not put off to the end of March.

Messrs. Voltaire brothers were also requested to forward another installment of necessaries and comforts and they were as punctual and satisfactory as before. For this postal service and by way of propitiatory present, Sheikh Mohammed received $10 of which probably two were disbursed. We therefore parted fast friends. He gave me an especial invitation to his home in the Hizmar and I accepting it with firm intention of visiting him as soon as possible.

meanwhile mr clark and ali marie were busy with buying up such stores as alakabar contains and the officers of the fort who stayed with us to the last were profuse in kind expression and in little gifts which as usual cost us double their worth in these lands one must expect to be done as surely as in italy what the process will be no one knows till it discloses itself but all experts feel that it is in preparation note on the supplies to be bought at alakabar

The following is a list of the stores with their prices. It must be borne in mind that the Hajj caravan was passing at the time we visited Al-Aqaba. A large sheep cost half a napoleon. The same was the price of a small sheep with a kid.

Fowls, 71 bought, 13 pence each. Pigeons, 6 pence a head. Eggs, 60, 2 for 3 pence. Tobacco, 8 pounds, coarse and uncut, but welcome to the Bedouin, 1 shilling per pound. Sam, or liquefied butter for the kitchen, also 1 shilling per pound. This article is always dear in Arabia, but much cheaper than in Egypt. Pomegranates, 50, 4 shillings a hundred. Onions, 1 kantar or hundredweight, 1 sovereign.

thin skinned syrian raisins five pence per pound dried figs twopence ha'penny per pound matches sixteen boxes three halfpence per box a small quantity of grain may be bought

Lentils, Ravalenta, Arabica are to be had in any quantity and they make an admirable travelling soup. Unfortunately, it is supposed to be food for falas and the cooks shirk it. The same is the case with junk, salt pork and peas pudding on board an English cruiser. Sour limes are not yet in season. They will be plentiful in April. A little garden stuff may be had for salads. The list of deficiencies is great, including bread and beef, potatoes, raki and all forms of diffusible stimulants.

Here, as at Cairo, the Piastre is of two kinds: metallic debased silver and non-metallic.

Government pays in the former, which is called sar or coin, and the same is the term throughout Egypt. The value fluctuates, but 97.5 may be assumed to equal one sovereign English, and 100 to the Egyptian lira. The second kind, used for small purchases, is not quite half the value of the former, 205 to 100. In northwestern Arabia, it is called the abyas or white, and tarifa, tariff.

the latter term in Cairo always signifying the sarg or metallic. The dodgers of the shroffs or money changers make housekeeping throughout Egypt a study of arithmetic. They

They cannot change the value of gold, but they rush the silver as they please, and thus the dollar cinco, i.e. the five-franc piece, formerly fetching 19.1, has been reduced to 18.3. The kreda, or copper piastre, was once worth a piastre. Now this coin of the realm has been so debased that it has gradually declined through 195 to 500 and even 650 for the sovereign. Moreover, not being legal tender, it is almost useless in the market."

As regards the money to be carried by such expeditions, anything current in Egypt will do. The Bedouin prefers sovereigns when offered five franc pieces and vice versa. The Egyptian sovereigns of 100 piastres, metallic or 250 current, must

must not be confounded with the Turkish 87.3 current 175.2 to 180. The Napoleon averages 77.6 current 160. The dollar varies according to its kind. The shilling is 3.35 current 10 and the franc 3.35 current 8. It is necessary to lay in a large quantity of small change by way of "bachchiche" such as 10 and 20 para bits 40 equals 1 piastre

End of chapter 7. Chapter 8 of The Land of Midian, revisited by Richard F. Burton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Paul Welford. Chapter 8. Cruise from Al-Aqaba to Al-Mawila. The shipwreck escaped. Resume of the northern journey.

I resolved the one hastening back with all speed to El Muehle, finishing, by the way, our work of quartz prospecting on the Aqaba Gulf. Thus far it had been a success. We heard of Maru in all directions, but all had not gone equally well. We had already on two occasions been prevented by circumstances from visiting the mysterious Hizma, and we now determined to devote all our energies to its exploration.

two heavy showers having fallen during the dark hours on february eighth aurora looked as if she had passed a very bad night indeed the mist-rack trailed along the rock slopes and rested upon the wady sands the mountains veiled their heads in clouds and above them lightnings to and fro ran coursing evermore till like a red bewildered map the skies were scribbled o'er

Meanwhile, in the northwest and southwest, we saw, rare thing in Arabia, Iris holding two perfect bows at the same time. Not to speak of wind dogs. Zephyrus, the wester here a noted bad character, rose from his rocky couch strong and rough, beating down the mercury to 56 degrees Fahrenheit. After an hour, he made way for Eurus, and the latter was presently greeted by Boreas in one of his most boisterous and blustering moods.

We steamed off with only a single stoppage for half an hour to cool the engine bearings at 7.30am and after one mile we passed on the Arabian side a ruin called Qasr al-Bint, the girl's palace.

Beyond it lies the Qasr al-Badawi, alias Al-Buraj of the Little Tower or Bastion, the traditional holding pier of the Great Chain. When Wellstead, to 146, says, Here, i.e. at the Qasr al-Badawi, I am told there is a chain extending from the shore to a pier built in the sea, he evidently misunderstood the Arabs. The eastern coast of Al-Aqaba begins with an abrupt mountain wall like that which subtends the whole of the Sinai shore till it trends south of the Minat al-Dahab.

After three miles, the heights fall into a stony, sandy plain, which rises regularly as a rake or stage slope to the Shara or Sia range, which closes the horizon. After two hours and 45 minutes, we passed into the fine, open, treacherous Bay of Hakal,

distant thirteen knots from Alakabar Fort to which it is the nearest caravan station. On the north-east and stretching eastward are the High Horse or Dorsum and the big buttresses of the long broad wadi which comes winding from the south-east. They appear to be a body of sand but, as usual on this coast, the superficial sheet, the skin, hardly covers the cyanite and pulveritic trap that form the charpont.

between west and south a long spit high inland and falling low till where its sandstone bluffet meets the sea proves to be the base of a large and formidable reef which extends in verduree patches over the blue waters of the bay it is not mentioned by welster to 149 who describes haggul on the arabian shore as a small boat harbour much exposed to the northerly winds

The embouchure of the wadi nourishes four distinct clumps of date trees, well walled round, a few charred and burnt, the most of them green and luxuriant. These lines are broken by the channels which drain the surface water, and between the two western sections appear the ragged front huts. Not a soul was seen on shore.

the wind blew great guns outside the bay and the inside proved anything but calm as the water was fifty-eight fathoms deep near the coast our captain found no moorings for his ship except to the dangerous reef and we kept drifting about in a way which would have distracted sensitive nerves i had been told of ruins and tumuli at el hagel which denote according to most authorities the messagian town ankale

Ptolemy 6.7.27 places this opidum Mediterranean between Machna or Mena, Madjen, and Madiyama, Mare Shueb, the old capital.

Unwilling, however, to risk the safety of the gunboat, where nothing was to be expected beyond what we had seen at Al-Aqaba, I resolved, after waiting half an hour, not to land. Asambouk received a cargo of quarrymen and sacks in order to ship at Makna the Argentiferous Galena and other rocks left by Lieutenant Youssef and Monsieur Philippine upon the shore, and, that done, she was directed to rejoin us at Tiran Island.

As long as the North are coursed high, she beat us hollow. In the afternoon, however, when the gale, as usual, abated, she fell off, perhaps purposely not willing to pass the night in the open. By sunset, her white sail had clean disappeared, having slipped into some snug cove. The Arabian shore here is of simpler construction than that of Sinai. Consequently, the chart has had a better chance.

The Mochibir resumed her way southwards in glorious weather, a fresh breath blowing from the north and fleecy clouds variegating the sky, which was almost as blue as the waves. After six miles and a half from El Hagel and nearly twenty from El Aqaba, she ran to the west of El Homeza island, the Omarsir of Wellstead 2149, between which and the mainland is a well-sheltered berth.

It is a great contrast with the hill of the fort, the pharaonic rock, this lump some 80 feet high built of secondary gypsum and yellow serpentine like the coast behind it.

gleaming deadly white pale as a corpse in the gorgeous sunshine and utterly bare except for a single shrub it is based upon a broad dark coloured barrier reef local tradition here places the cassarelle badawiya palace of the badaw woman or girl but we saw neither sign of building nor trace of population on the second island which the gulf alakabar owns

We then passed sundry, uninteresting features and night fell upon us off Jebel Tayyib Ism where familiar scenes began to present themselves. The captain had already reduced speed from four and a half to three knots, his object being to reach the Bukhaz or Gulf Mouth after dawn, but as midnight drew near it became necessary to ride out the furious gale with the gunboat's head turned northwards.

monsieur le cas a stout-hearted little man worked half the night at the engine assisting mr dugard about four a m february eighth a lull in the storm allowed her to resume her southerly course but two hours afterwards an attempt to make the mcnaugh shore placing her broadside on to the wind created much confusion in the crockery and commotion among the men

always a lively craft she now showed a volks like agility for as is ever the case she had no ballast and who would take the trouble to ship a few tons of sand at such moments the engine was our sole standby had it played one of its usual tricks the mohbir humanly speaking was lost that is she would have been swamped and waterlogged as for setting sail it was not till our narrow escape that i could get the canvas out of stowage in the hold

As the morning wore on, the gulf became even rougher with its deep and hollow waves. They seemed to come from below as if bent upon hoisting us in the air. The surface water shivered and the upper spray was swept off by the north wind which waxed colder and more biting as we steered sunwards. The Sinertic side now showed its long slopes and at 9.45am we passed the palms of the Nabiqi anchorage some six miles from the gate.

On the shore of Midian, south of the dark Fahisat mountains, four several buttresses of gypsum, decreasing in size as they followed one another eastwards, trended diagonally away from the sea. This part of the Arabian coast ends in a thin point. The maps call it Ras Fartak and the pilots Sheikh Hami, from a holy man's tomb to which pious visitation is made.

The other land tongue adjoining to the south is known as Umbrus or Mother of Heads. I cannot find out whence Ruppel borrowed his Umel Hassanii

As we approached the ugly gape of the formidable gulf, the waves increased in size and coursed to all directions, as if distorted by the sunken reefs. The eastern jorm is formed by Tiran Island, the western by the sandy Ras Nasrani, whose glaring, tawny slope is dotted with dark, basaltic cones, detached and disposed like great ninepins. Beyond this gape, the Sinaitic coast as far as Ras Muhammad, the apex of the triangle, is fretted with little indentations, hence its name, El Sharoum, the Creeks.

Near one of these baylets, Wellstead chanced upon volcanic rocks which are not found in any other part of the peninsula. This sporadic outbreak gives credibility to the little harar reported to be found upon the bank of the Midianitish Wadi Souk.

A hideous, horrid reef, dirty brown and muddy green, with white horses madly charging the black Diabolitus, whose ugly heads form chevaux de frie, a stony tongue based upon Turan Island, and apparently connected from the eastern coast behind, extends its tip to mid-channel. The clear way of the dreaded Bourras is easily found in the daytime. At night, it would be almost impossible, and when Midian shall be rehabilitated, this reef will require a pharaoh's.

Adieu, small spitfire of a gulf. The change from the inside to the outside of the Burqat al-Aqaba was magical. We at once glided into summer seas, a mosaic of turquoise and amethyst fanned by the softest of breezes, the thermometer showing on deck 63 degrees Fahrenheit. Perhaps the natural joy at our lucky escape from making a hole in the water caused the beauties of the weather and the glories of the scenery to appear doubly charming. Our

Our captain might have saved 15 miles by taking the shortcut north of Tehran Island under whose shelter we required a day for boiler tinkering. His pilot, however, would not risk it and we were compelled, nothing loath and little knowing what we did, to round for a second time the western and southern shores.

The "Hill of Birds", which some have identified with the classical island of Isis, shows a triune profile, what the Brazilians call a "muela" or "gizzard". Of its three peaks, the lowest is the eastern and the central is the highest reaching 700, not 1000 feet.

Viewed from within the gulf it is a slope of sand which has been blown in sheets up the backing hills. The ground plan, as seen from a balloon, would represent a round head to the north, a thin neck and a body rudely triangular, the whole measuring a maximum of five miles in length. The sandy northern circlet connected by the narrowest of isthmuses sweeping eastwards forms the noted port.

The material is the normal secondary formation, sulphates and carbonates of lime supporting modern corallines and conglomerates of shell. Horizontal lines of hardstone are disposed in huge steps or roads that number three to six on the flank of the western peak. The manganese-coloured strata which appeared at Marais-Chouet and in the rent bowels of the Rue Remat-Macnard are conspicuous from the south. The whole has been upheaved by cyanite which again has been cut by dykes of platonic stone, trap and porphyry.

at two p m we anchored in a roadstead to the south-east of the island open to every wind except the norther i had sent lieutenant emir and sundry quarryman ashore to inspect what looked like a vein of sulphur

They delayed two hours instead of a few minutes. The boiler was grumbling for rest, and, not wishing to leave them adrift in an open boat, I imprudently consented to await them in a roadstead where the coast was dangerous, instead of proceeding as had been intended to the fine landlocked port Nature Hollowed in the eastern side of the island. The old captain pitifully represented to me that his crew could not row, and I found this to be generally the case. Ten miles with the oar would be considered a terrible corvée by the Egyptian manor warsmen.

After blowing off steam, we at once went a-fishing. The only remarkable result was the discovery that this corner of the Red Sea is a breeding ground for sharks. We had not seen one in the Gulf of Al-Aqaba, where last April they swarmed. Here, however, the school contained all sizes and every age, and they regarded us curiously with their cat's eyes, large, dark, and yellow-striped down the middle.

A small specimen that had just cut its teeth was handed over to the cook despite his loudly expressed disgust. The meat was somewhat mealy and short-fibred but we pronounced in committee the sea dog to be thoroughly eatable when corrected by pepper, garlic and Worcester sauce. The corallines near the shore were finally developed. Each bunch, like a tropical tree, formed a small zoological museum and they supplied a variety of animalculae including a tiny shrimp.

The evening saw a well-defined halo encircling the moon at a considerable distance, and Mr. Dugard quoted the Scotch saw, The blast was nearer than we expected, and during the rest of the journey, the bruch rarely, if ever, deceived us. Yet, the night was not much disturbed by the furious northerly gusts, showing that the storm which we had escaped was raging in the still-vexed Aqaba.

Next morning we landed to the southwest of Tehran's easternmost peak with a view of prospecting and adding to our collections. On the shore, about 300 feet from the sea, is a bank of dead shells which are not found on the northern or sandy end of the island. Near the water, most of them are tenanted by poguri or hermits. We caught a number of crabs and small fish and we carried off a single rock oyster as yet we had not found that the ostrida, the vulgar form of the Hellenic and classical istudia, abounds in these seas.

After 30 minutes walk up the southern plane of the prism composed of gypsious and coraline rocks, veins of white petrosylex resembling broken colliumels, streaks of magnetic black sand and scatters of grit and harder stones we reached the summit of the little ridge. It afforded a fine bird's eye view of the splendid middle port of the false harbour, of the real shoal to its southeast and of the basin which seems to form Sinafir island.

we now bent to the south-west here the surface is much cut and broken by sandy weddies dotted with a few straggling plants to our right was a gauze or inclined aranaceous bank where the south wind had sifted the sand from the gravel disposing the former in the hollows and the latter on the crest of the ripples

Presently we reach the strange formation which, seen from the east, appears a huge vein, red and rusty, beginning close to the sea and crossing the body of the island from south to north, while a black cone is so disposed that its southern front simulates a crater. An arrow gorge opens up a semi-circular hollow lined with acracious or ferruginous matter, in fact part of the filon which sends off fibrils in all directions.

The confusion of formations was startling. The floor was here of white, patricilics, there of grey granite, variegated with squares and lozenges, drops and pineapples, red, green, neutral tinted and disposed by oxides of iron and copper in natural designs that looked artificial.

scattered over the bed of the upper ravine beyond the hollows were carbonates of lime reddy brown and chocolate hued here a pudding stone there porous like basalt the calcera sulphates were both amorphous and crystalline the latter affected by contact with plutonic matter

The walls of the gash showed a medley of clay breccias disposed in every imaginable way and divided by horizontal veins of heat-altered quartz. A few paces further led to the head of the ravine where a tumble of huge rocks choking the bed showed that the rain torrents must at times be violent.

Meanwhile, Mr. Clark and Lieutenant Amir had walked to the large central harbour, hoping there to hit upon sweet water and some stray Hoteim fishermen who would show us what we wanted. They did not find even the vestige of a hut. The two exploring parties saw only three birds in the Isle of Birds and not one of the venomous snakes mentioned at Tehran by Wellstead 2-9 and described as measuring about 30 inches of a slender form with black and white spots.

We also utterly failed to discover the sulphur which was once abundant and the naphtha which, according to the Zem authority, was produced here in considerable quantities and was used by the Arab mariners to pay their boats.

The evening was exceptionally fine and calm, and we expected on the morrow, February 11th, a quiet return to El Muehle. Yet a manner of presentiment induced me to summon the engineer and his native assistants, and to promise the latter a liberal bachshish if, by hard work at the boiler all night, and by rigging up the ship's pump instead of a donkey engine, they could steam off at dawn.

Unexpectedly, about 4am, a violent sandy and misty wester began to blow and all fancied that we had set sail to the south. Quite the contrary. The engine was still under repair, the M'kbeer was being tossed and rolled by the inshore set and the sequel is quickest told by an extract from my penny.

Written in sight of death, wind roaring furiously for victims, waves worse, no chain can stand these sledgehammer shocks. Chain parts and best sheet anchor with it, bower and cage anchors thrown out and drag. Fast stranding, broadside on, sharp, coralline reef to leeward, distant 150 yards. Sharks!

Packed up necessaries. Sandbuch has bolted and quite right too. Engine starts some ten minutes before the bump. Engineer, admirably cool, never left his post for a moment, even to look at the sea. Chouji, cook, skinning a sheep. He has been wrecked four times and don't care. Deck pump acting poorly. Off in very nick of time, 9.15am.

General Joy, damped by broadside, turned to huge billows, lashed down boxes of specimens on deck and wore round safely. Made for Sinaphir, followed by waves threatening to poopers, howling wind, tears, mist to shreds. Second danger worse than first, run into green waters, fangs of naked rocks on both sides within biscuit throw. Stumps show when the waves yawn.

Nice position for a bandbox of old iron. With much difficulty, slipped into blue water, rounded south end of spit, and turned north into glorious Sinafir Bay, safe anchorage in eight fathoms, anchored down at 10.15am after one hour of cold sweat.

Distance, seven miles on chart, nine by course. Mukhbir never went so fast, blown like chaff before wind. Faces cleared up, all round shaking of hands. Alhamdulillah, followed by a drink. Some wept for joy. The engine, or rather the engineer, had saved us, as the saying is, it was touch and go, the nearest thing I ever did see.

Had the rotten old boiler struck work for five minutes when we were clearing out of Tehran or steaming along the Sinafa shore, nothing could have kept the ship afloat. Those who behaved best, a fireman, a boy who crept into the combustion chamber to clear it, and the helmsman who, having been at Liverpool, spoke a little English, were duly backsheeshed. The same reward was given by mistake to the boilermaker, Mohammed Saeed Haddad, who had malingered instead of working through the night.

At Suez, he had the impudence to ask me for shahada, or testimony to his good character. On the whole, the conduct of the crew was worthy of all praise. In a decently equipped English steamer, we should have laughed at this storm and whistled for more wind, but the condition of the Mokhbir quite changed the case. The masts might have rolled out, or she might have sprung a leak at any moment, and supposing that we had escaped the crash upon the reef, the huge waves, and the schools of sharks, our situation would have been anything but pleasant."

the island of turan as has been shown is a grisly scrap of desert it has no sweet water and its three buds would not long have satisfied thirty hungry men it is far from the mainland the storm which lasted through two days was too violent for raft or boat to live and at so early a season native craft are never seen on these seas

Briefly, a week might have elapsed before our friends at Almohuela who were startled by the wildness of the wind could have learned our plight or could have taken measures to relieve the castaways.

Sinafe Island, which we have to thank for giving us hospitality on two occasions, consists mainly of a bay. Viewed by the Noma Verticalis, it is shaped like an ugly duckling, with an oval, well-stood Caesar circular, body of high ground disposed northeast to southwest, and with head and neck drooping westwards, so as to form a mighty pier or brickwater.

The watery plain within is out of all proportion to the amount of terra firma. The body profile shows straight-backed heaps of gypsum some 200 feet high which become coin-shaped about the middle of the aisle. These hillocks are connected by low strips of sand growing the usual vegetation, especially the pink Statis pruinosa.

presently our sambuq which had also lost chain and anchor before she could run out of the storm appeared to the north-west of the bay and a pilgrim craft bound for sewers was our companion in good fortune

A party landed to examine Sinafi, which still shows signs of a junction with Tehran. In days when the secondary formation was an unbroken street, the whole segment of a circle extending from Sharm Yahar to northern Sinai must have been dry land. These reefs and islands are now the only remnants. The islet itself seems lately to have been two, the neck and head are one, and the body is another. An evident sea cliff marks the junction, and what appears like a wadi below it is the upper-race seabed of Coralline.

To the northwest and outside this strip lies the little port defended by a network of reefs in which our sambuk had first taken refuge. The bay shore bears traces of more than one wreck and in the graveyard used by the native sailor an open awning of flotsam and jetsam looks from afar like a tumble down log hut. The number of reefs and shoals shown by stripes of vivid green water promised excellent fishing and failed to keep its promise.

At length, after a third wasted day, we managed, despite a new hole in the old boiler, to steam out of hospitable Sinafir at 6.30am on the auspicious Wednesday, February 13th. The appearance of the Mokhbir must have been original enough. Her canvas had been fished out of the hold, but in the place of a mainsail she had hoisted a topsail. We passed as close as possible to the islet line of secondary formation, beginning with Shu Shu, the wedge bluff-faced to south.

The Palinurus anchored here in a small bight on the northeast side between two reefs and narrowly escaped being wrecked by a northerly gale. At 10.45am we were alongside of Barach Khan, a double feature, lumpy and cliffy, connected by a low sandy isthmus. The eastern flank gives good shelter to native crafts.

Lastly came Yubar, the compound coin, the loftiest of the group, upwards of 350 feet high, with its low-lying neighbour Wali. These islets have classical names, as I have mentioned before, and appear once to have been inhabited. Even at Yubu, the least likely of all, we heard from several authorities of a deep rock-cut well, covered with a stone which the Arabs could not raise.

And now we were able to cast an intelligent glance in review of the scenes made familiar by our first or northern march. The surpassing purity of the transparent atmosphere, especially at this season, causes the land to look as near as 20 at 10 miles, and thus both distances, showing the horizon with the utmost distinctness, appear equally close to the ship.

Beginning towards Al-Aqaba, the Jibbal al-Zana behind Mahre Shuaib and its mighty neighbour, the Jibbal al-Lawz, form the horizon of mountains which are not the least among the giants. Southwards appear the Jibbal al-Tihama, the noble forms of the seaboard, the parallel chains noting the eastern boundaries of Madian proper, while behind them the Jibbal al-Shafar, reduced to blue heads and fragments of purple wall, are evidently disposed on a far more distant plain.

As regards the Jibal al-Tahama, I have registered ad nauseum the names of the eight several blocks into which, between al-Sahad north and al-Shahr south, the curtain, rising from a sea horizon, seems to divide itself. Everyone consulted gave me a new or a different term, and apparently seamen and landsmen have their separate nomenclature. Thus, the pilots call the Fars, Harb, and Dibakh blocks Jibal al-Mosebah, Tiriam,

and Dahmer after the wadis in the main valleys that drain them. The Bedouin again will name the whole block after the part most interesting to them. Thus, the tower-like formation characterising Jebel Dibach was often called Jebel al-Jim, and even this, as will appear afterwards, was not quite exact.

We fired a gun off El Mueyla, where our camp, ranged in a long line, looked clean and natty. At 5pm, we were once more at home in our old quarters, the Sharm Yahar. The day's work had numbered 50 direct geographical miles between Sinafir and El Mueyla, with five more to our dock. Resume Our journey through Madian Proper, North Midian, had lasted 54 days, December 19th, 1877 to February 13th, 1878.

During nearly two months, the expedition had covered only 105 to 107 miles of ground. This, however, does not include the various by-trips made by the members, which would more than double the total, nor the cruise of 200 miles round the Gulf of Aqaba, ending at El Mueyla. The total of camels employed varied from 106 to 61, and their hire, including bachshish and all minor charges, amounted, according to Mr Clark, to £316.14.

This section of North Midian may be described as essentially a mining country which, strange to say of a province so near Egypt, has been little worked by the ancients.

The first Khadivial expedition brought back specimens of free gold found in basalt, apparently eruptive, and in corundophilite, which the engineer called greenstone porphyry. Silver appeared in the red sands and in the chloritic quartz and in the titaniferous iron of the Jebel el-Abeys, the value being 265 to 300 francs per tonne, with traces in the scoriae.

The second expedition failed to find gold, but brought back Argentiferous galena in copper-stained quartz and possibly neocritious red veins seaming the secondary gypsum with silicates and carbonates of copper, select specimens of the latter yielding the enormous proportion of 40%.

In this northern region, the great focus of metallic deposit appears to lie between northern latitude 28 degrees 40 minutes and 27 degrees 50 minutes. That is, from Jebel Tayyib-Ism, north of Machinar, to the southern basin which contains the Jebel el-Abyaz, or White Mountain. Its characteristics are the argentiferous and cupriferous ores, whereas in South Midian, gold and silver were worked, and the parallelogram whose limits are assigned above might be converted into a northern grant.

concerning the immense abundance of gypsum and the sulphur which is suspected to be diffused throughout the secondary formation, ample details have been given in the preceding pages.

The principal ruins of ancient settlements and the ateliers, all of them showing vestiges of metalworking, numbered eight. These are, beginning from the south, Tirim, Shammar, Einunah, the Jebel al-Abiyaz, Mughal Shoaib, Machna, Taib Ism, and Al-Aqabah. Mughal Shoaib, the Mediyamah of Ptolemy, is evidently the ancient capital of the district.

It was the only place which supplied Midianitish Nabathean coins. Moreover, it yielded graffiti from the catacombs, fragments of bronze which it will be interesting to compare by assay with the metal of the European prehistoric age, and finally stone implements worked as well as rude.

I will end with a few words concerning the future industry of North Midian. For the success of these mines, the greatest economy will be necessary. The poorest ore can be treated on the spot by crushing and washing where no expenditure of fuel is required. The richest stone that wants roasting and smelting would be shipped, when worth the while, from North Midian to Suez. There, coal is abundant and the deserted premises of De Sord Bay, belonging to the Egyptian government, would form an excellent site for a great usine central.

Finally, the richest specimens, especially those containing, as many do, a medley of metals, would be treated with the least expenditure and the greatest advantage at Swansea or in other parts of England, where there are large establishments which make such work their specialty. The following analyses of the specimens brought home by the first Khadivil expedition were made at the Citadel Cairo by the well-known chemist Gastinelle Bay in conjunction with Monsieur Georges Marie, the engineer attached to the expedition.

Analyses, Messieurs Gaston Albet and Georges-Marie of Cairo, of rocks brought home by the first Krivila expedition, all by Voie Seche. Gold, assay on 100 grams. Number one, in basalt, query, lava. Number two, in serpentine, brackets, none in white quartz.

Silver. 1. In Philon Hossein, 1 one-thousandths equals 265 to 300 francs per tonne. Brackets. Very good. Number 2. In Red Sands, 1 ten-thousandths equals 20 francs per tonne. Number 3. In Scoria, Traces. Brackets. None in white quartz or in the black sands. Copper. Number 1. In Enuna Quartz, 4.5 per hundred. Number 2. In Philon Hossein, 2.5 to 3.4%.

Phylon Hossein = Titaniferous iron 86.5, silica 10.1, copper 3.4 Number 3: In Claretic state: 1.4% Claretic state of Machnarr = Silica 90.5, Carbonate of lime 5.6, Oxide of iron 2.3, Copper 1.4 Sulfur Jebel el-Kibrit of El Mueyla: 4% above, 9 ditto below

Lead everywhere. Calamine zinc very rich. End of chapter 8. Chapter 9 of The Land of Midian, revisited by Richard F. Burton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Paul Welford. Part 2. The March through Central and Eastern Midian. Chapter 9. Work in and around El Mueyla.

We arrived at El Mawila too late to meet the Hajj caravan which, home returning, had passed hurriedly through the station on February 9th. This institution has sadly fallen off from its higher state of a quarter of a century ago. Then commanded by an Amir al-Hajj, Lord of the Pilgrimage, in the shape of two parshas or generals, it is now under the direction of a single bey or colonel.

The true believers, once numbering thousands, were reduced in 1877-78 to some 800 souls, of whom only 80 appeared at El Mawila, and the peculiar modification of modern days is that the Mahmal is escorted only by paupers. Yet the actual number of the Hajjis who stand upon Jebel Arafat, instead of diminishing, has greatly increased. The majority prefer voyaging to travelling.

The rich hire state cabins on board well-appointed infidel steamers, and the poor content themselves with faithful sambuqs. Indeed, it would seem that all the present measures, quarantines of 60 days and detentions at Richard Tor, comfortless enough to make the healthiest lose health, are intended to discourage and deter palmers from proceeding by land. If this course be continued, a very few years will see the venerable institution represented by only the Mahmal and its guard.

The late Zaid Pasha of Egypt once consigned the memorial litter per steam frigate to Jeddah. The inner version saved rafa or blackmail to the Bedouin, but it was not approved by the Muslim world. The Hajjis were so poor that they had nothing for barter or for sale. Happily, however, there was a farrier amongst them, and Lieutenant Yusuf took care that our meals were properly shored.

Monsieur Philippine had been a maréchal farron, but a kick or two had left him no stomach for the craft. Our two fellow travellers with the whole camp had set out from Magnan on February 6th and marched up the great Wadi al-Kharaj. Along the eastern flank of the Jabal al-Fahizad, the Iron Mountain, they found many outcrops of quartz, a rock which appears sporadically all the way to the northern Soufrière.

In two places it was green-stained, showing copper, while in another, hydrated oxide and chromate of iron, hematite, abounded.

After a stage of four hours and twenty minutes, they left the caravan, struck off to the west, accompanied by Sheikh Furej, and reached their destination. Here, however, they met with accidents. The mules bolted, followed by the Sheikh's dromedary, and they were obliged to hurry off for fear of losing the caravan, now well ahead of them. Thus, when I had ordered Lieutenant Yusuf to make a detailed plan of the formation, he had spent exactly ten minutes on the spot, and he appeared not a little proud of his work.

This young officer was not a pleasant companion. He had doubtless received his orders, but he carried them out in a peculiarly disagreeable way, taking note of all our proceedings under our eyes. Together with Lieutenant Amir, he began to make a collection of geology, both being utterly innocent of all knowledge, imitated us in picking up specimens, mixed them together without notes or labels, and on return to Cairo, duly presented them at the Citadel. This was all that was required. The papers were written to and reported as follows.

Closer examination has shown that the turquoises brought to Cairo are merely malachite and that the existence of any such quantity of gold as would pay for their working is, to say the least of it, very doubtful.

The whole camp, indeed, was seized with a mania for collecting. Old Hadju Ali again gathered bits of quartz, which he once more presented as goldstone to his friends and acquaintances at Zagazeg, and Anton, the dragoman, triumphantly bore away fragments bristling with mica-slate, whose glitter he fondly conceived to be silver.

Lieutenant Yusuf was presently dispatched with three soldiers, three quarry men, Jazee the Arab guide of a former visit and eight camels to bring back specimens of the copper silicate to the south of Ain Arna and

and to make a regular survey of the northern solfatara. He set out early on February 18th, and after 21 hours of caravan marching, reached the Jebel al-Farar. Here, the outcrop is bounded north by the Wadi al-Farar, and south by the Wadis al-Marha and al-Niran, the latter forming the general recipient of these nilas.

this jebel is about a hundred and twenty feet high of oval form stretching one thousand seven hundred fifty meters from north-north-west to south-south-east the rich silicate not carbonate of copper which distains a streak and affects the file is found as usual with this ore only in one part of the valley to the south-west some thirty-five feet above the sole it is a pocket a circumscribed deposit as opposed to a true vein or a vein fissure

The adjoining rocks containing carbonates of iron and copper and the ore mass is apparently carbonate of lime. This second visit generally confirmed the report of Ahmad Kaptan except that there were no signs of working as he had supposed. The travellers passed the hole of February 20th at the diggings, made a plan and sent back two camel lords, four sacks, of the gang in charge of a soldier to the Fort El Mueyla.

On the next day, the little party, made for the Wadi Einuna and striking to the left of the straight line, cross the maritime country. Here are massive wadis, including our friend the Afal. This highway to the northern Hizmar falls, I have said, into the Minat el Eynat, a portlet useful to some books. Its sickle-shaped natural breakwater, curving from west to south, resembles that of Sinaitic Marsa el Gnai and those which are so common in western Iceland. On

On February 22nd, a very devious path, narrow and rocky, lasting for one hour, led them, about noon, to the northern Jebel al-Kabrit. The distance from El Mawila is about 66 miles, and the country west of a line drawn from Ainuna to Makna was, before this march, utterly unknown to us, consequently to all the civilised world.

Lieutenant Yusuf's two journals checking each other, his plan and his specimens, enable me to describe the northern deposit with more or less accuracy. The Sulphur Hill is a long oval of 400 metres east-west by a maximum of 180 north-south, but it extends branches in all directions. The mineral was also found in a round piton, a knob on the Wadi Moseir attached to the north-eastern side. The flattened dome is from 50 to 60 feet high and the piton 140 m2.

The metal, underlying a dark crust some 12 to 15 centimetres thick, appears in regular crystals and amorphous fragments of pure brimstone pitting the chalky sulphate of lime. Blasting was not required. The soft material yielded readily to the pick.

This gypsious or secondary formation was found to extend not only over the adjacent hills but everywhere along the road to McNarr. The important point which now remains to be determined is, I repeat, whether sulphur vents can be found diffused throughout these non-platonic rocks.

Lieutenant Yusuf fixed his position by climbing the adjacent hills, whence Sinafir bore 190 degrees and Shushu 150 degrees, both magnetic, while greater elevations to the west shut out the view of lofty Tiran and even of the Sinaitic Range. The nearest water in the Wadi al-Nakhil to the northeast was reported to be a two-hours march with loaded camels five miles. Sinafir's

Several little ports, quite unknown to the hydrographic chart, were visited. These are, beginning from the north, the Minat Hamdan, lying between Machna and Dabar, a refuge for Sambuqs defended like that of old Madian by rising ground to the north. About three miles and a quarter further south is the Sham Dabar, the Shum Dabar, good anchorage of the chart. This mass of reefs and shoals may have been one of the excellent harbours mentioned by Procopius.

It receives the wadi Shab el-Ghan or Jahn, the watercourse of the demons, Jahn, ravine, flowing from a haunted hill of redstone near which no Arab dares to sleep.

From that point the traveller struck nine miles and a half to the south-east of Ghubat Soehil. This roadstead, used only by native craft, lies eastward of the long point forming the Arabian staple of the Gulf al-Akhbar's gate where the coastline of Midian bends at a right angle towards the rising sun. Adjoining it to the east and separated by long thin spit is the Ghubat al-Waghab or Wajib.

the mouth of the watercourse similarly named it is also known to the katira or smaller vessel and about a mile up its bed which comes from the north-east there is a well according to jazi the guide this ghabar or gulf distant only four to five hours of a slow marching from the sulphur hill will be their properest place for shipping produce

In another eastern feature, the Wadi Gial or Jial, distant some 11 miles and a half from Enuna and ending in a kind of sink, there is a fine growth of palms about a quarter of a mile long and a supply of wild brackish water in wells and rain pools. These uninteresting details will become valuable when the sulphur mines of North Midian are ripe for working.

From the Rabat el-Waghrab, the path, easily travelling over flat ground, strikes to the north-east and 14 miles and a half beyond joins the Enuna Highway. On February 26th, at the end of nine days work, Lieutenant Youssef returned to El Mawela with two sacks of sulphur-bearing chalk which justified his previous report. As it will appear, the expedition was still travelling through the interior. After a halt for rest at headquarters, he rejoined us on our northward route from Sibar and I again found useful occupation for his energies.

Upon our happy return home, i.e. Sham Yaha, preparations for a march upon the Hizma were at once begun. My heart was firmly fixed upon this project, hoping to find an unworked California to the east of the Hara volcanoes, but the sheikhs and the camelmen, who did not like the prospect of a rough reception by the Maza'a bandits, threw sundry, small stumbling blocks in our path.

It was evidently useless to notice them so far from the spot. They would develop themselves only too well as we approached the tribal frontier. While these obstacles were being cleared away, we carefully examined the little dock that had so often given us shelter in the hour of need, and I set a small party to work at the central Jebel al-Kabrit which had been explored by the first expedition.

Sham Yachar is the usual distorted T, a long channel heading in a shorter crosspiece. It is formed by the confluence of four valleys, all composed of corallines and conglomerates of new sandstone. Those to the north and the northwest show distinct signs of upheaval. The two eastern features, known as the Wadi al-Hahr, the hot water course, of which Yachar appears to be a corruption, bear marks of man's hand.

The dock is divided into an outer and inner port by a projecting northern point which was not sufficiently marked in the chart enlarged plan. At this place where the tide rises a full metre the crew of the Mochbeer had built a jetty of rough boulders by way of pastons and to prevent wading. Native craft lie inside opposite the ruins of a stone house. The existence of a former population is shown by the many graves on the upper plateau.

In the northern Wadi al-Har also we picked up specimens of obsidian, ologistic iron and admirably treated, query modern slags showing copper and iron. Evidently some gypsy-like atelier must once have worked upon the Wadi al-Har. The obsidian also has apparently been subjected to the artificial fire and a splinter of it contains a paillette of free copper.

What concerned us most, however, was the discovery of oysters, which, adhering to the reefs projected underwater from the rocky northern cliff, formed a live conglomerate, and, from the present time forwards, we found the succulent mollusks in almost every

every bay. Those to the south, where the shell has overlised sand and mud, are not so good. At this season, the strida is flat, fleshy, and full-sized. The shell has a purple border, and the hinge muscle of the savage far stronger than that of the civilised animal. Together with its exceeding irregularity of shape, giving no purchase to the knife, makes oyster opening a sore trouble.

"'We tried fire, but the thick-skinned things resisted it for a long time, "'and when they did gape, the liquor had disappeared, thereby spoiling the flavour. "'The beard was neither black, like that of the Irish, nor colourless, as in the English oyster. "'The Bedouin, who ignored the delicacy, could not answer any questions about the spatting season, "'probably it is earlier than ours, which extends through June. "'Whether also a close time is required, as in England to August 4th, we could not guess.'

The young probably find a natural culch in the many shells, cockle and others that strew the rock, sand and clay. Knowing that my gallant friend Adderall MacKillop Pasha of Alexandria takes great interest in Austro-culture, I sent him from Suez a barrel of the best Midianites. The water had escaped by the carelessness of the magazine man, enough however remained alive to be thrown into the harbour Eunostos, where they will, I hope, become the parents of a fine, large progeny of natives.

Similarly, we had laid in a store of 42 long-goosed crayfish for presentation at court and to gladden the hearts of Carine friends. Our Greeks placed the tubs in the sun and so close to the funnel that, after about three hours, all the fine collection perished ignobly. We will now proceed to the central Jebel al-Kabrit, a superficial examination of which, by the first expedition, proved that the upper rock yielded four and a lower nine percent of tolerably pure brimstone.

The shortest cut from the dock harbour lies up the southern wadi Har with its strangely weathered sandstone rocks, soft modern grits that look worm-eaten. Amongst them is a ledge-like block with undermined base projecting from the left bank. Both the upper and the lower parts are scattered over with wasm or Arab tribal marks. On our return from El Widge we found this sandstone tongue broken in two.

The massive route remained in situ but the terminal half had fallen on the ground. This was probably the work of an earthquake which we felt at Cham d'Omega on March 22nd. The track then strikes the modern hard road which runs west of and close to the Sulphur Hill. The line is a succession of watercourses and in Wadi Khargah we found blocks of the hydro-silicate corundaphilite which may be serpentine. It is composed of a multitude of elements, especially pyrites.

After an hour and a quarter's sharp walking we hit the broad Wadi al-Kabrit which rounds its jebel to the southeast and which feeds the Wadi al-Jibar, itself a feeder of the Sham Jibar. The latter, which gave us shelter in the corvette Sinar Captain Ali Bey, is a long blue line of water bounding the western base of the Sulphur Hill.

This central toile el-kibrit is an isolated knob rising abruptly from wadi ground measuring some 240 feet in height and about 880 meters in diameter, not including its tail of four vertebrae, which sets off from northwest to southeast. Viewed from the north it is, as the Egyptian officers remarked, a regular haram or pyramid with a kidney-formed capping of precipitous rock.

Drinkable water like that of the Wadi al-Ghal is said to be found in Wadi al-Kabrit to the northeast and the country is everywhere tolerably wooded. The Bedouin brought us small specimens of rock crystal and fragments of negro quartz, apparently rich in metal, from a neighbouring Maru. They placed it among the Ilmases to the east and south and we afterwards found it for ourselves.

Our middle sulphur hill differs essentially from the two other deposits, the northern near Machna and the southern near El Widge, in being plutonic and not sedimentary. One would almost say that it smokes, and the heat-altered condition of the granite, the greenstone and other rocks, looking as if fresh from a fire, suggests that it may be one of the igneous veins thrown westward by the great volcanic region El Harar.

In parts it is a conglomerate where a quantity of quartz takes the place of chalk and gypsum. Other deposits are iron-stained and have the appearance of the decomposed iron pyrites which abounds in this neighbourhood. Usually the yield is normal brimstone yellow, yet some of the beds are deep red as if coloured by ochre or oxide of iron. This variety is very common in the Sulphur Taras of Iceland and I have heard of it in the Jebel Mokattam near Cairo. The colour is probably due to molecular changes and possibly shows greater age than the yellow.

monsieur philippine was directed to take charge of sergeant mabrouk the nine quarrymen and the badawi owners of two camels to carry his boring irons forge and water from el maweila i advised him to dig at least forty feet down all round the pyramid wherever surface indications attracted notice old experience had taught me that such depth is necessary before one can expect to find brimstone beds like those of sicily

the borings brought up sulphur from fourteen metres beyond these six were pierced but they yielded nothing in and around the pyramid m philippine sank five pits the northernmost shaft half-way up the hill gave crystals of the purest sulphur

if the depth of the deposit be not great the surface extent is the pyramid evidently forms the apex of a large vein which strikes north-south the field consists of this cone with its dependencies especially the yellow cliffs to the north and the south facing in the latter direction a large plain cut by the wadi al-kabrit

Moreover, a vein of the red variety about 3km long by 25-30m broad lies to the south-east near a gypsum hill. The latter also yields the crystallised salt which so often accompanies sulphur and heaps of gigantic, half-fossilised oyster shells are strewed about it.

Monsieur Philippine here remained 16 days, February 18th to March 5th, during our absence in the East Country. On return, we found our good blacksmith, much changed for the worse. Whilst in hard work, he had been half-starved, the Jarafin Bedouin of the neighbourhood having disappeared with their flocks, he had been terribly worried by the cameleers, and he had been at perpetual feud with the miserable quarrymen. I never saw a man less fitted to deal with two-legged natives.

the latter instinctively divined that he would rather work himself than force others to work and they acted accordingly the expedition was thus divided into four three working parties and one of idlers anton and petros were left behind to do nothing as magazine men

Lt Darwish, the linesman, who was too weak to ride, and Sub-Lieutenant Mohammed, the miner, who was told to travel, had charge of the sick. Both found the Varniente equally sweet. On February 17th, I again bid adieu to the gunboat Mojvir and marched with the largest party upon our camp at El Mueyla, distant about 6 miles, 1 hour 45 minutes.

The path from Cham Yaha crosses the hard sands of the maritime plain, mettled with the natural macadam of the desert. The stone is mostly dark silex, the hen's liver of the Brazil, and its surface is kept finely polished and free from patina by the friction of the dust-laden winds. The line is deeply gashed by short, broad gullies. The hard gerod running further east heads these ugly nilas.

The third and largest channel is Wadi Sur, the greatest valley of Al-Muwila, which may be regarded as the southern frontier of Madian proper. We shall trace it to its head in the Hizmar.

i had left the camp pitching at el mouela to the egyptian officers who naturally chose the site nearest the two northern wells a wave of ground hot by day cold at night windy and dusty at all times moreover the water was near enough to be horribly fouled no wonder that in such a place many of the men fell ill and that one subsequently died our only loss during the four months march

On February 18th we proceeded under the misguidance of Abash Bouzouk of the fort Ahmed Salih el-Maloun to inspect a neighbouring ruin called Aba Hawawit, the father of dwelling walls. While in page 30 he declares that finding no mention made of Wamueli in Arab scripts nor traces all traditions among the existing generational land pointing to a high antiquity.

He is inclined to consider it a town of modern origin, in fact the growth of the Egyptian pilgrimage. His error is excusable. He was a passing traveller, and I well remember that for a whole year the true name of a hill immediately behind our house at Damascus remained unknown to me. We had called it after our own fashion, and the term had at once been adopted by all our over-polite native friends. Indeed, this is one of the serious difficulties to be encountered throughout the East by the scrupulous traveller whose greatest fear is that of misleading others."

The expedition had paid for several visits to El Mueyla and had never heard a word about ruins when I happened to read out before the sheikhs assembled at Mare Shoeb a passage from El Makrizi treating of the destroyed cities of Matien. They at once mentioned half a dozen names lying within the short distances of the little salt. Amongst them was Abu Huawit, literally meaning ten-mount walls, but here applied in the short form Huawit to ruins in general.

Had Wali Hadji, as Waleen was called by the Bedouin, looked only 10 feet beyond the northeastern tower of the fort near the ruins of a modern mastaba or masonry bench, he would have found long-forgotten vestiges of ovens and slags containing copper and iron. The same will prove to be the case about the inland defence of El Widge. In fact, all these works seem for obvious reasons to have been built upon sites that have been utilised long before their modern day.

El Muehuelo is probably a more important place than it is at present when the reef harbour which now admits native craft only by a gap to the south-west had not been choked by shoals. The sandy soil wants only water to produce a luxuriant perennial growth and every garden can have its well. But more life is wanting. A man heaps up a thorn hedge or builds a swish wall of the brick clay underlying the wadi and he forgets only to lay out the field within.

local history does not it is true extend beyond two hundred years or so the probable date of sheikh abdullah's venerated sebulker a truncated parallelogram of cut coralline on the wadi srei year to the north of the settlement yet this little salt is too remarkable a sight to have remained unoccupied

Possibly it is the untranslated word the horse village and Quarry Fort which Ptolemy 6.2 places in northern latitude 26 degrees 40 minutes, true 27 degrees 40 minutes, whilst his other untranslated word would be the glorious char, correctly consigned to northern latitude 27 degrees 20 minutes. This argues an error of nearly 60 miles by the geographer or his copyists.

But chapter 12 will attempt to show that the latitude of a third untranslated word, the modern Shoaq, is also one degree too low. So on the East African coast, Ptolemy places his Aromata Promontorium, which can only be Guadafui, between northern latitude 5 degrees and 7 degrees, whereas it lies in northern latitude 11 degrees, 41 minutes and 4 seconds.

The Awal Hawawet or First Ruins begin on the right bank of the Sur after one mile and three quarters from camp and bear northeast 55 degrees magnetic from the minaret of El Mawela Fort. The position is a sandy basin containing old Bedawi graves bounded by a low ridge forming a boulder-clad buttress to the wadi while the circuit of the two may be a mile and a half.

A crumbling modern tower crowning the right bank and two maraca rubstones where the principal remains. The situation must have been well chosen in the days when the heights were wooded and the wadi was a river. We afterwards mapped the body of the place lying about three miles from the fort showing the Yubu bank to the northwest 298 degrees magnetic and nearly due west 260 degrees magnetic El Mawila's only house the Said's.

The site is a home or island in the Wadi Sur which here runs east-west and splits. The main line is the southern and a small branch, a mere gully, occupies the northern bedside.

The chief ruin is an oblong of 20 meters by 16, the short ends facing 195 degrees magnetic, the whole built of huge pebbles. The interior is composed of one large room to the north with sundry smaller divisions to the south, east and west. Defense was secured by a wall distant 142 meters thrown across the whole eastern part of the islet. Outside it are three large pits, evidently the site of cisterns.

The people also told us of a well, the Bir El Ashkram, which had long been mysteriously hidden. Immense labour has also been expended in reverting the northern and southern banks, both of the islet and the smaller branch bed, for many hundreds of yards with round and water-rolled boulders, even on a larger scale than at Mare Chouaibh.

What all this work meant we were unable to divine. Perhaps it belonged to the days when the seabed of Midian was agricultural and it was intended as a protection against the two torrents, the Wadi al-Zila and the Abu Sabah, which here fall into the northern bank.

The 18th of February also made itself memorable to the second expedition. Monsieur Marie was strolling near the old furnaces to the northeast of the fort, where, in 1877, he had picked up an auriferous specimen, unfortunately lost before it reached Cairo. Here he again found a fragment of serpentine, broken, and water rolled into the semblance of half a globe. It showed crust and stains of iron, fillets of white quartz, and a curve of bright yellow dots, disposed like the chainlet of an aneroid.

Thereupon we gravely debated whether these were the remains of a vein or had been brought to the surface by the rubbing and polishing of the stone in water.

I could not but remark that the interior, which appeared piratiferous, did not show the slightest trace of precious metal. Still, the discovery gave fresh courage to all our people, as Rofi was shown to every Bedouin far and near with the promise of a large reward, fifty dollars, to the lucky white who could lead us to the rock in situ. The general voice declared that the goldstone was the produce of Jebel Malay or Malay

We afterwards ascertained by marching up the Wadi Sur that it was not. In fact, the whole neighbourhood was thoroughly well scoured, but the results were nil. In due course of time, the tarnishing and the disappearance of the metal reduced my scepticism to a certainty. The gold dots were the trace of some pilgrim or soldier's copper-nilled boots. It was the first time that this ludicrous mistake arose, but not the last. Our native friends were ever falling into the same trap.

Amongst the minor industries of the fort El Mueyla must be reckoned selling gazelles. The Bedouin bring them in and so succeed in taming the timid things that they will follow their owners like dogs and amuse themselves with hopping upon his shoulders. When thus trained, Ariel is supposed to be worth half a Napoleon. The wild ones may be bought at almost every fort as Zibar or El Ouij. End of chapter 9

Chapter 10 of The Land of Midian, revisited by Richard F. Burton. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, read by Paul Welford. Chapter 10 Through East Midian to the Hizmar

The land of Midian is by no means one of the late Prince Metternich's geographical expressions. The present tenets of the soil give a precise and practical definition of its limits. Their Arras Madian extends from El Aqaba north, northern latitude 29 degrees 28 minutes, to El Mueyla with its Wadi El Sur, northern latitude 27 degrees 40 minutes. It has thus

a total latitudinal length of 108 direct geographical miles. South of this line, the seaboard of northwestern Arabia, as far as Al-Hajaz, has no generic name. The Bedouin are contented with such vague terms deriving from some striking feature as the lands of Zibar, of Wadi Salma, of Wadi Dama, of Al-Wij, to denote the tract lying between the parallels of Al-Mu'ayla and of Wadi Hams in northern latitude 25 degrees 55 minutes 15 seconds.

Thus, the north-south length of the southern moiety would be 105 direct geographical miles, or a little less than the northern, and the grand total would be 213 miles.

The breadth of this Egyptian province is determined by the distance from the sea to the maritime mountains. In Madian proper, or north median, the extremes would be 24 and 35 miles. For the southern half, these figures may be doubled. Here again, the Bedouin are definitive as regards limits. All the Tehama, or lowlands, and their ranges belong to Egypt. East of it, the Daulat Sham, or government of Syria, claims possession.

I have taken the liberty of calling the whole tract Midian. The section above El Mawila, Madian proper, I would term North Midian, and that below it, South Midian. In the days of the ancient Midianites, the frontiers were so elastic that, at times, but never for a continuity, they embraced Sinai and were pushed forward, even into central Palestine. Moreover, I would prolong the limits eastward as far as the Damascus-Medina road. This would be politically and ethnologically correct. With the

With the exception of the Mu'azzar country, the whole belongs to Egypt and all the tribes formerly Nabataean are now more or less Egypto-Arab, never questioning the rights of His Highness the Viceroy who garrisons the seaboard forts.

Of the other points, historical and geographical, I'm not so sure. My Leonard friend Alois Spranger remarks, Let me observe that your extending the name Midian over the whole country, as far south as the dominions of the port, appears to me an innovation by which the identity of the race along the shore of the Gulf of Aqaba and of the coast under Waj and Haura is predetermined.

prejudged. Would it not be better to leave Midian where it always has been, and to consider Barda the centre of Thamuditis, as it was at the time of Pliny and Ptolemy, and has continued to be until the Bali and other Kuda tribes came from southern Arabia and exterminated the Thamudites?

This is doubtless a valid objection. Its only weak point is that it goes too far back. We cannot be conservatives in geography and ethnology, nor can we attach much importance in the 19th century to a race, the Benitamud, which had wholly disappeared before the 7th. On the whole, it still appears to me that by adopting my innovation we gain more than we lose, but the question must be left for others to decide.

In our days, two great sultanes or highways bound Madian the Less and Midian the Greater. The western, followed by the Haj al-Misri or Egyptian caravan, dates from the age of Sultan Salim Khan the Conqueror who, before making over the province to the later Mamluk bays, levelled rocks, cut through ridges, dug wells, laid out the track and defended the line by forts.

Before that time, the road ran for convenience of water to the east or inland. It was in fact the old Nabataean highway which, according to Strabo, connected Lukei Komei with the western capital Petra. Further east and far beyond the double chain of maritime mountains is the highway followed by the Haj al-Shamy or Syrian or Damascus caravan which sets out from Constantinople, musters at Damascus and represents the Sultan. On both these main lines, water is procurable at almost every station.

and to them military expeditions are perforce limited.

The parallelogram between the two, varying in breadth according to Weyland from 90 to 120 miles, direct and geographical, is irregularly supplied in places with springs, wells and rain pits, which can always be filled up or salted by the Bedouin. The main body of the expedition, Mr Clark, Messieurs Marie and Lecaze, Ahmed, Captain and Lieutenant Amir, set out from El Mueyla at 6.30am February 19th, escorted by the Sayid and the three salaried sheikhs, including our friend Farage.

the remingtons numbered ten and there were also ten pigs of whom five waited upon the mules of the sixty-one camels six were dromedaries and as the road grew lighter our beasts of burden increased somehow or other to sixty-four

The caravan now loads in 20 minutes instead of 5 hours, and when politike, or fear of danger, does not delay us, we start in a quarter of an hour after the last bugle sound. This operation is under charge of Lieutenant Amir, who does his best to introduce Darfurian discipline, the camels being first charged with the fanatis, metal water barrels, then with the boxes, and lastly with the tents.

After passing the ruins of Abu Hawawit, we began at 9.15am to exchange the broad wadi sur of the flat seaboard with its tall banks of stiff drab clay for a gorge walled with old conglomerates and threading the ruddy and dark green foothills of the main qat

As in the Wadi al-Makadar and other winter brooks, the red porphyritic trap, heat-altered argil easily distinguished by its fracture from the cyanides of the same hue, appeared to be ironclad, coated with a thin crust of shiny black or brown peroxide. This peculiarity was noticed by Tuki in the Congo, by Humboldt in the Orinoco, and by myself in the San Francisco River.

I also saw it upon the sandstones of the wild mountains east of Jerusalem, where, as here, air and not water must affect the oxide of iron. In both cases, however, the cause would be the same, and the polish would be a burnishing of nature on a grand scale. After six very slow miles we halted for rest and reflection at a thread of water in a section of the sewer which receives the Wadi al-Najjil.

The sides were crowded with sheep and goats, the latter, as in the Syrian lowlands, almost invariably black, and the adjoining rocks had peculiar attractions for hares, hawks and partridge. In these upland regions, water is almost everywhere, and generally it is drinkable, hence the Bedouin naturally prefer them to the coast. An umbrella-shaped thorn tree, actually growing on a hilltop and defined by the skyline, excited our wonder and admiration, for here, as in Pontus...

nec aec felix in apertis eminet alvis abhor et in terra est altera forma mares indeed throughout her journey this spectacle always retained its charm aiding fancy to restore the barons to what they had been in the prosperous days of yore

The Wadi Sur now began to widen out and to become more riot, whilst Porphyry was almost the only visible rock. After a total of ten dawdling miles, marching almost due east, we found our tents pitched in a broad and quasi-circular basin called the Al Saf.

the level ground of Jebel Mali Mount Pleasant which the broad-speaking Bedouin lengthened to Malay. Our camelmen had halted exactly between two waters and equally distant from both so as to force upon us the hire of extra animals. We did not grumble however as we were anxious to inspect the afran or furnaces said to be found upon the up heights of the shahr of these apocryphal features more hereafter.

fresh difficulties the jarafin hauetat tribe that owns the country south of the sur could not be reached under a whole day of dromedary riding in reality they were camped a few furlongs off but anything to gain eight pounds per diem for doing nothing

Two Bedouin shepherd lads promised to act guides next morning and duly failed to appear, or more probably were forbidden to appear. They had also romanced about ruins, fountains, palms and rushes in the Wadi al-Kusayb, the southeastern influent. At night, Ahmad al-Ukbi

surnamed abu khatum arrived in camp he had travelled more than once to tabouk carrying grain and though he had failed as a merchant he retained his reputation as a guide as regards the furnaces he also like foreij could speak only from hearsay opinions were divided in camp i saw clearly that a stand was being made to delay us for four or five days and despite grumbling i resolved upon deferring the visit till our return from the interior

The first march had led us eastward instead of northeastward in order to inspect the Wadi Sur. From the seaboard, this line which drains the northern flank of the Shah Mountains appears the directest road into the interior. We shall presently see, however, why the devious northern way of the Wadi Sadr had become the main commercial route connecting Al Mawila with Tabuk. During the evening, we walked up the Wadi Sur, finding in its precipitous walls immense veins of serpentine and porphyritic greenstone, but not a speck of gold.

The upper part of the Fjormara also showed abundant scatters of water-rolled stones, serpentines and hard feldspars whose dove-coloured surface was streaked with fibrils and at times with regular veins of silvery lustre as if brought out by friction of the surface. I offered a considerable sum to Jerofin Beddowey if he would show the rock in situ. He was evidently ignorant of it, but like others he referred us to Jebel Mali. The whole of the next day, February 20th, was spent in Northing.

Leaving the nosy brain caravan to march straight on its destination, we set out 6.15am up the wadi Goe Mara, guided by Hassan el-Uqbi, who declared that he well knew the sights of the ruined settlements of al-Khlasa and al-Zibayeb. After walking half an hour, we turned eastward into a feedover of the sur, the wadi al-Khlasa, whose aspect...

charmed me. This drain of the inner Jadayal block was the replica of a fiumara in Somaliland, a broad, tree-dotted flat of golden sand bordered on either side by an emerald avenue of dense mimosas forming line under the greenstone hills to the right and the redstone heights to the left. The interior, we again remarked, is evidently more rained upon and therefore less sterile and desolate than the coast and the sub-maritime regions and here one can well imagine large towns being built

at last after walking about an hour and a half four miles and a half towards the shahr with our backs turned upon our goal the rat-faced little intriguer hassan declared that he knew nothing about el khalasa but that zibayeb lay there pointing to a bright red cliffy peak abal barred on the left bank of the wadi and to others whose heads were blue enough and low enough to argue considerable distance

he had intended his cousin gabr to be the real guide and to take himself all the credit but i sent off the palace judge in another direction mr clark whose cantering mule had no objection to leave its fellows rode off with the recreant hassan while we awaited his return under a tree

Instead of hugging Abal Barid, behind which a watercourse would have taken him straight to his destination, he struck away from the Wadi al-Khalasa. Then, crossing on foot and hauling his animal over a rough divide, he fell, after six miles instead of two, into the upper course of the Wadi Sur, which he reported to be choked with stones and refusing passage to loaded camels. As will appear afterwards, the reverse is the case. The ruins of al-Zabayb lie at a junction of three, or rather four, watercourses. The eastern is the Sur,

here about five hundred yards broad forming a bulge in the bed and then bending abruptly to the south a short line from the south-west the wadi zibayb drains the abal bared peak and the northernmost is the wadi el safra upon which the old place stands

The western part is the larger and the more ruinous. The thin line, 300 yards long by 30 broad, never shows more than two tenements deep owing to the hill that rises behind it. Here the only furnace was found. The eastern block measures 100 yards by 40. Both are raised to their basements, resembling the miners' settlement on the Sharmar Cliff. They attract attention only by their material, red boulders being used instead of green porphyries on the hills, and the now desolate spot shows no signs of water or of palm groves.

"'Mr. Clark rejoined us after a couple of hours, "'having lost the dog Brahim. "'Under a sudden change of diet, "'it had become too confident of its strength, "'and thus it is that dogs and men come to grief. "'We retraced our steps down the Wad-el-Khalasa, "'whose jebel is the crupper of the little block Um-Jadayl. "'The lower valley shows a few broken walls, "'old Arab graves, and other signs of ancient habitation, "'but I am convinced that we missed the ruins, "'which lay somewhere in the neighbourhood.'

One Suleiman al-Badawi of the Salalima Huweta tribe, who had been rascalised by residents at Al-Mu'ayla, was hunted by the energetic Saeed, hoping as usual that no action would be taken upon mere words. He declared that Al-Khalasa stood on the top of a trap lump. We halted to inspect it, and Lieutenant Amir rode the Shatana, his vicious little shemule, up and down steeps fit only for a goat. Again, all was in vain.

we then travelled over granite gravel along the western foothills of umjadale in which a human figure or statue had been reported to me now however it became a sabut or upright stone along the flanks of the chief outlier the jebel al-ramzah distinguished by its red crest and veins the slope was one strew of quartz whole and broken like that which we had seen to the north and which we were to see on our southern journey

despising the rotten water offered in two places by the um jadail we pitched camp on the fine gravel of the sayyil wadi al jim here i heard for the first time after sighting it for many weeks that the latter is the name not of a mountain but of a shah or gully in the jebel dibakh where waters meet

the wedy cheshabria separating the umjudeil from its northern neighbour the debach looks like a highway but all declare that it is closed to camels by war or stony ground of its ruins more when we travel to the shahr this day's march of four hours ten miles and a half had been a series of zigzags north north-east west and again north

after a cool pleasant night we set out at six thirty a m february twenty first across the broad sail towards a bay in the mountains bearing n w the mouth of the wadi zinara entering the block we made two short cuts to save great bends in the bed

the first was the sharp el lewewi the wewi of walin page three or four wild riding enough the path often winding almost due east when the general direction was north-north-east we saw for the first time pure greenish-yellow chlorite outcropping from the granite

The animals were apparently hibernating and the plants were rare. We remarked chiefly the sorrel and the blue thistle, or rather, wild artichoke, the shauk el jamel, a thorn loved by the camels Blepharis edulis, which recalled to mine the highlands of Syria. The second shortcut, the wadiel ga'aga, alias sawawin, was the worst of the two. The deep drops and narrow gutters in the quartz-veined granite induced even the sheikhs to dismount before attacking the descents. This is rarely done when ascending, for the beasts climb like Iceland ponies.

One of Monsieur Lacasse's most effective croquis is that showing Monture and Man disappearing in the black depths of a crevice. Some of the hill crests were weathered with forms resembling the artificial. At the midday halting ground we saw a stone mother nursing a rock child, which might still be utilised in lands where thaumaturgy is not yet obsolete.

Our course thence lay eastward, up the easy bed of the Fjormara, an eastern section of an old friend, the Wadi Tirium. It now takes the well-known name Wadi Sadr, and we shall follow it to its head in the Hizmar. The scene is rocky enough for Scotland or Scandinavia, with its huge walls bristling in broken rocks and blocks, its blue slides, and its polished sheets of dry water course which, from afar, flash in the sun like living cataracts.

On the northern or right bank rises the mighty Harb, whose dome, single when seen from the west, here becomes a tridactylon, splitting into three several heads. Facing it, the northernmost end of the Debach range forms a truncated tower, conspicuous far out at sea. Having no name, it was called by O's, Birch, Jebel, Debach. A little further to the east, it will prove to be the monstrous pommel of a dwarf saddleback. Everywhere, a favourite shape with a granite outcrop.

Messieurs Clark and Lecaze, who had never before seen anything higher than the hillocks of the Isle of Wight or the Bout de Montmartre, were hot upon ascending the almost perpendicular sides of the verge, relying upon the parallel and horizontal fissures in the face, which were at least 10 to 20 feet apart. These dark marks, probably stained by oxide of iron, reminded me of those which wrinkle the granitic peaks about Rio de Janeiro and which have been mistaken for hieroglyphs.

The valley sole is party coloured, the sands of the deeper line to the right are tinctured pale and sickly green by the degradation of the porphyritic traps here towering in the largest masses yet seen, while the gravel of the left bank is warm and lively with red grit and cyanitic granite. Looking down the long and gently waving line, we feel still connected with the civilised world by the blue and purple screen of Sinai forming the splendid background.

Everything around us appears deserted. The Ma'aza, Arup country, and the Beni Okba have temporarily quitted these grazing grounds for the Sur of El Mawela. We camped for the night after a total march of 11 miles at the Sahil el Nagwa, a short nullah at the foot of a granite block similarly named, and a gap supplied us with tolerable rainwater. On the next day, February 22nd, we left the Nagwa at 7 instead of 6am and passed to the right a granitic outcrop in the wadi bed, a reduced edition of the Burj.

After an hour's slow walking, we were led by a Badawi lad, Hassan bin Hussein, to a rock spur projected northwards from the left side and separating two adjacent sails or torrent beds, mere bays in the bank of mountains. A cut road runs to the top of the Granite Tongue, which faces the westernmost or downstream outbreaks of the huge porphyritic masses on the other side of the Wadi Sadr.

the ridge itself is strewed with bald stone quartz broken from the veins that seam the granite and with slag as usual admirably worked not a trace of human habitation appears nor is there any tradition of a settlement having existed here consequently we concluded that this was another atelier of wandering workmen

Below the rock tongue we found for the first time oxydilated iron and copper either free or engaged in trap and basaltic dikes. The former metal also attached in layers to the dark red vermil jasper here appears streaked with white quartz.

Resuming our ride, we dismounted after four miles at the halfway Mahatta halting place. It is a rond-point in the Wadi Sadr, marked from afar by a tall blue pyramid, the Jibbal al-Gala or Jala. We spent some time examining this interesting bulge. Here, the Jibbal al-Tahama end and the eastern parallel range, the Jibbal al-Shafar, begins.

The former belong to the Huaytad and to Egypt, the latter partly to the Ma'aza and to Syria. The geographical frontier is well marked by two large watercourses disposed upon a meridian and both feeding the main drain, the Sadr of Tiriam. To the north, the Wadi Sawada divides the granitic Harb from the porphyritic Jebel Sawada, while the southern, Wadi Elan, separates the Dbach from the Jebel Elan, a tall form distinctly visible from the upper Shahr.

The rest of our eastward march will now be through the Shafar Massif. It resembles on a lower scale the Tahama Ghats, but it wholly wants their variety, their beauty and their grandeur.

The granites, which before pierced the porphyritic traps in all directions, now appear only at intervals, and this, I am told, is the case throughout the northern, as we found it to be in the southern, prolongation of the lip range. At the same time, there is no distinct geographical separation between the two parallels, and both appear not as if parted by neutral ground, but rather as topographical continuations of each other.

While breaking our fast and resting the meals, a few shots ringing ahead caused general excitement. We were now on the edge of the enemy's country. Presently, three of the Ma'aza came in and explained with their barking voices that their people had been practising at the Nishan target, which meant we have powder in abundance.

One of them, at once dubbed Elnas Naz, the satyr, from his exceeding monstrous ugliness, a baboon's muzzle with a scatter of beard, kindly volunteered to guide us with the intention of losing the way. The dialogue that took place was something as follows. What are your names? Answer, na'akl wa'a na'shrab. Our names are We Eat and We Drink. Where do we find water today? Frej ejaculates. The water of the Rikab!

Answer, no by Allah. The Arabs will never allow you to drink. You should be killed for carrying off in dumuz, or skins, the sand of the Wadi Jahd, alluding to Lieutenant Amir's trip. We did not pay much heed to these evil signs. Ahmed al-Uqbi had been sent forward to obtain a free pass from the chiefs and we hardly expected that the outlying thieves would be daring enough to attack us.

Resuming our way in a cold wind and a warm sun up the Wadi Sadr, we threaded the various bends to the south and southeast with a general south-southeastern direction. The normal dark green traps and burnished red porphyries and grits were sparsely clad with the shohat and yassar trees resembling the salvadora and the tamarix. The country began to show a few donkeys and large flocks of sheep and goats.

"'The muttons have a fine tog "'and sell for three dollars and a half. "'The women in charge, whose complexions "'appeared notably lighter than those of the seaboard, "'barked like the men. "'They were much puzzled by curious bleating "'which came from the mules, "'and hurriedly counted their kids, "'suspecting that one had been purloined, "'lost they had some trouble "'to prevent the whole flock following us. "'All rode with laughter "'when they found that Mr. Clark was the performer.'

We crossed two shortcuts over long bends in the wadi and at the second found a pothole of rainwater by no means fragrant except to nostrils that love impure ammonia. It has a grand name, Mu'a, for Mi'a el-Rikab, the waters of the caravan, and we made free with it despite the morning's threats.

We again camped in the valley at an altitude of 2,200 feet, aneroid 27.8, and though the thermometer showed 66 degrees Fahrenheit at 5pm, fires inside and outside the mess tents were required. A wester, or sea breeze, deflected by the ravines to another was blowing, and in these regions, as in the sub-frigid zones of Europe, wind makes all the difference of temperature.

"'During the evening we were visited by the Ma'aza Bedouin "'of a neighbouring encampment. "'They began to notice stolen camels "'and to wrangle over past times. "'Another bad sign. "'Setting out on a splendidly lucent morning, "'6.45 a.m., February 23rd, "'when the towering heads of Harb and Debach "'looked only a few furlongs distant, "'we committed the imprudence of proceeding, "'as usual, the escort. "'Our men had become so timid, "'starting at the sight of every wretched Bedouin, "'that they made one long for a rash act.'

After walking about a mile and a half, we passed some black tents on the left bank where the satyr enters a narrow rocky gorge and suddenly about a dozen varlets were seen scampering over the walls, manning the pass and with lighted matches threatening to fire. Then loud rang the war song.

lose thy toplocks with a loosing like a lion's mane and advance thy breast all of it oponite pectera without shrinking other varieties of the slogan are o man of small mouth o miserable if we fail who shall win

by thy eyes i swear o she-camel if we go to the attack and gird the sword we will make it a day of sorrow to them and avert from ourselves every ill we dismounted looked our weapons and began to parley

the ragged ruffians some of them mere boys and these always the readiest to blow the matches of guns longer than themselves began with high pretensions they declared that they would be satisfied with nothing less than plundering us they flouted sheikh forage and they insulted the saeed threatening to take away his sword presently the escort and the arab camel-men were seen coming up at the double

The ma'aza at once became abject, kissed our heads and declared, There was some mistake. I had already remarked whilst the matchlock men were swarming up the wadi's sides that the women and children remained in camp and the sheep and goats were not driven off. This convinced me that nothing serious had been intended. Probably the demonstration was ordered from headquarters in order to strike us with a wholesome oar.

the fellows gently reproached us with travelling through their country without engaging and paying raffia guides and protectors so far as owners of the soil they were in the right and manning our passes here the popular way of levying transit dues on this occasion the number of our remingtons sufficed to punish their insolence by putting them into flight and by carrying off their camels and flocks

but such a step would have stopped the journey and what would not the aborigines protection society have said and done i therefore hired one of the valets and both parties went their way rejoicing that the peace had not been broken

The valley, winding through the red and green hills, was dull and warm till the cool morning Easter, which usually set about 8am, began to blow. The effect of increasing altitude showed itself in the vegetation. We now saw for the first time the cadad or astragalus with horrid thorns and a flower resembling from afar the gooseberry. It is common on the Hizmar and in the South Country.

the cahla or ecceum a buglos a borage-like plant with viscous leaves and flowers of two colours the young light pink and the old dark blue everywhere beautified the sands and reminded me of the Istrian hills where it is plentiful as in the Nile valley

The Jaredthorn was not in bloom, and the same was the case with the hyacinth, Dipcardi erythrium, so abundant in the Hizmar, which some of us mistook for a wild onion. The Zeti, Lavangela, had just donned its pretty azure bloom. There were Reseda, wild indigo, Tribulus or terrestris, the blue Aristida, the pale stupa, and the bromus grass, red and yellow. The ratum, Spartium,

with delicate white and pink blossoms, was a reminiscence of Tenerife and its glorious crater, whilst a little higher up, the amine cytisus flowering with gold carried our thoughts back to the far past. Presently, the great fiumara opened up a large basin denoting the ras, or head, Wadi Sarra.

native travellers considered this their second stage from el moela in front the djibbal sadr extended far to the right and left a slight depression showing the kereta or pass which we were to ascend on the morrow buttressing the left bank of the broad watercourse was the dwarf hill of which we had been told so many tales

By day, its red sands gleam and glisten like burnished copper. During the night, fire flashes from the summit. In truth, its sole peculiarity is that of being yellow amongst the gloomy heights around it, whilst the Wadi al-Safra, higher up to the left, discharges from its jebel a torrent of quartz and cyanite, gravel and sand. Abu Khartam, the author of the romance, was among the party. He only smiled when complimented upon the power of his imagination.

This was a day of excitement. Even the mules kept their ears pricked up. After a short nine miles, we had camped below the Jebel Kibar and we had remounted our animals to ascend a neighbouring hill commanding a bird's eye view of the Hizmar plain. There was evidently much excitement amongst the Bedouin shepherds around us and presently Ahmed el-Uqbi, our messenger, appeared in sight, officially heading the five chiefs of the Ma'aza who were followed by a tale of some thirty clansmen.

Only two road horses, Richard Garrand's stolen from the Rwala, the great branch of the Aniza, which holds the eastern regions, the rest rode fine, sturdy and long-coated camels, which looked Syrian rather than Midianite. We returned hurriedly to make arrangements for the reception. Our sheikhs could not, without derogating, go forth to meet the strangers, but the latter were saluted with due ceremony by the bugler and the escort drawn up in line before the mess tent.

After the usual half-hour's delay, the palava, to speak African Issa, came up, and Monsieur Lacaze had a good opportunity of privily sketching the scene. The Sheikh, Mohammed bin Atiyah, who boasts falsely that he commands more than half the 2,000 males composing the tribe, is a tall, sinewy man of about 50, straight-featured, full-bearded, and gruff-voiced. His official style of speaking from the throat, a kind of vaccine low, imitated in camp for many a day, never failed to cause merriment.

his costume rose to the heights of desert fashion described when portraying sheikh khizr the emirani his manners were those of a gentleman below the pass and above it he became an unmitigated ruffian who merited his sobriquet el galb the hound

on one side sat his son salem a large beardless lad who had begun work by presenting us with a sheep georgy cook said it cost us forty pounds on the other was his eldest brother and alter ego the wrinkled sagr or sakr had been a resident at cairo and still boasts that he received the tribute of a horse from the viceroy whom he affects to treat as an equal or rather an inferior

The others were old Sagara's ill-visaged son Ali, and lastly a cunning-eyed villain Abid bin Salim, the rightful heir to the chiefsmanship, which, however, he had been unable to keep.

All the sheikhs were dressed in brand new garments and glaring glossy kafirs or headkerchiefs. They traded chiefly with Mazarib in the Quran and during the annual passage to and fro of the Damascus caravan they waited at Tabuk and threatened to cut off the road unless liberally propitiated with presents of raiment and rations.

The muratiba or honorarium contributed by al-Sham would be about $100 in ready money to the headman, diminishing with degree to $1 per annum. This would not include free gifts by pilgrims. The mazhar are under Syria, that is, under no rule at all, and they are supposed to be tributary to when in reality they demand tribute from the port. In fact, nothing can be more pronounced than the contrast of the Bedouin who are subject to Egypt and those supposed to be governed by the wretched Ottoman.

During the palaver, all outside was sweet as honey, to use the Arab phrase, and bitter as gall inside. The ma'aza, many of whom now saw Europeans for the first time, eyed their bannata, or hat, curiously, with a certain facial movement which meant, this is the first time we have let Christian dogs into our land.

they were minute in observing the escort and not a little astonished to find that all were negroes in the old day egyptian soldiers under the great mohammed ali pasha and his stepson ibrahim pasha had made themselves a terror to the wild man

what had now become of them was the mental question when asked whence they had procured the two horses they answered curtly min ravina from our lord thus signifying stolen goods and like medieval knights they took a pride in avowing that not one of their number could read or write finally a tent was assigned to them food was ordered and they promised as escort to their dens on the morrow

During the raw and gusty night, the mercury sank to 38 degrees Fahrenheit, the aneroid 26.91 showing about 3,000 feet above sea level, and blazing fires kept up within and without the tents hardly sufficed for comfort. On the morning of February 24th, over the world the wind blew cold, and the Egyptian officers all donned their gloves.

The early hours were spent in a last struggle with our sheikhs, who now felt themselves and their camels hopelessly entering the lion's lair. The sole available pretext for delay was that their animals could never carry the boxes and tents up the pass, but though very ugly reports prevailed concerning the reception of Ahmed al-Oqbi and the observations that had been made last night, not a word was suffered to reach my ears until our retreat had been resolved upon. Such concealment would have been inexcusable in a European. In the East, it is the rule.

At 7:15 am we struck the camp at Jabal Qibar and moved due eastward towards the pass. This north-eastern khareta or col is termed the Kharetat el-Hizma or El Jils. After a hillock on the plateau's summit, to distinguish it from the similar feature to the south-west, the latter is known as the Kharetat el-Zibar or El-Tihama, the local pronunciation of Tihama.

About two miles of rough and broken ground lead to the foot of the ladder. The zigzags then follow the line of a mountain torrent, the natural pass crossing its bed from left to right and from right again to left. The path is the rudest of corniches, worn by the feet of man and beast and showing some ugly abrupt turns. The absolute height of the ascent is about 450 feet, aneroid 26.7 to 26.25 and the length half a mile.

the ground composed mostly of irregular rock steps has little difficulty for horses and mules but camels laden with boards the mess-table and long tent-poles must have had a queer time i should almost expect after this to see an oyster walking upstairs of course they took their leisure feeling each stone before they trusted it but they all arrived without the shadow of an accident and the same was the case during the two subsequent descents

We halted on the Sathel-Nakab, the past stop, to expect the caravan and to prospect the surrounding novelties. Heaps and piles of dark trap dotted the summit like old graves. Many of the stones were inscribed with tribal marks, and not a few were capped with snowy lumps of quartz detached from their veins in the porphyry. This custom, which appears universal throughout Midian, has many interpretations."

According to some, it donates the terminus of the successful raid. Others make it sure where a dispute was settled without bloodshed. Whilst as a rule, it is an expression of gratitude. The Bedouin erects it in honour of the man who protected or who did a service to him, saying at the same time, Abiyaz Alek Ya Fulan, white or happy, be it to thee, naming the person.

Amongst these votive stones we picked up copper-stained quartz like that of Anuna, fine specimens of iron, and dove-coloured serpentine with silvery threads so plentiful in the Wadi Sur. The wasm in most cases showed some form of a cross, which is held to be a potent charm by the Sinaitic Bedouin, and on two detached water-rolled pebbles were distinctly inscribed 1H and V1, which looked exceedingly like Europe.

Apparently the custom is dying out. The modern Midianites have forgotten the art and mystery of tribal signs, wasum. In many places, the people cannot distinguish between inscriptions and Bill Snooks his mark, and they can interpret very few of the latter.

Looking westward through the inverted arch formed by the two hill staples of the Jareta and down the long valley which had given us passage, the eye distinguishes a dozen distances whose several planes are marked by all the shades of colour that the most varied vegetation can show. There are black browns, chocolate browns and light umber browns, bright reds and dull reds,

grass greens and cypress greens, neutral tints and the French greys contrasting with the rosy pinks, the azures, the purples and the golden yellows with which distance paints the horizon. From a few feet above the coal floor appear the eastern faces of the giants of the coast range and our altitude some 3,800 feet gave us to a certain extent a measure of their grand proportions.

we now stand upon the westernmost edge of the great central arabian plateau known as el nedjd or the highlands opposed to el tihama the lowland regions in africa we should call it the true subtending the false coast delightful to home compared with the leprous lagos

This upland, running parallel with the Lip Range and with Maritime Gratz, is the far-famed Hizmar. It probably represents a remnant of the old terrace which, like the secondary Gypsius formation, had been torn to pieces by the volcanic region to the east and the platonic upheavals to the west. The length may be 170 miles. The northern limit is either close to or a little south of Fort Ma'an and we shall see its southern terminus sharply defined on a parallel with the central shahr, not including El Jor.

An inaccessible fortress to the south, it is approached on the southwest by difficult passes easily defended against man and beast. Further north, however, the wadis at Afal, near al-Sharaf, al-Hagl and al-Yitim at al-Aqaba are easily lines without war, stony ground or nakab .

the hizmar material is a loose modern sandstone showing every hue between blood-red rose-pink and dead dull white again and again fragments had been pointed out to us near the coast in ruined buildings and in the remains of handmills and rubstones

Possibly the true coal measures may underlie it, especially if the rocks east of Petra be, as some travellers state, a region of the old, not the new red. According to my informants, the Hizmar has no hills of quartz, a rock which appears everywhere except here, nor should I expect the region to be metalliferous. We ascended the Jebel al-Khareta, a trap hillock some 120 feet high, the southern jom of the Khareta Gate. The summit, where stands a ruined burj, measuring 14 metres in diameter, gives a striking and suggestive view.

After hard, dry living on Grizzly Mountain and unlovely Wadi, this fine, open plain, slightly concave in the centre, was a delightful change of diet to the eye, the first enjoyable sensation of the kind since we had gazed lovingly upon the broad bosom of the Wadi al-Arabah. The general appearance is that of eastern Syria, especially the Horan, at the present season, all is a sheet of pinkish-red, which in later March will turn to lively green. On this parallel, the diameter does not exceed a day's march, but we see it broadening to the north. The

looking in that direction over the gloomy metal porphyritic slopes upon which we stand the glance extends to a manner of sea horizon while several plains below it are dotted with hills and hill ranges white red and black all dwarfed by distance to the size of thimbles and pincushions the guides especially pointed out the ridge al mokacum a red block upon red sands and a far-famed rendezvous for raid and

nearer the dark lumps of el kharani rise from a similar surface nearer still lie the two white dots el rakamatein and nearest is the ruddy ridge jebel and jils el rawiyin containing they say ruins and inscriptions of which walin did not even hear the eastern versant of the hizmar is marked by long chaplets of tree and shrub disposed along the selvage of the watercourses and the latter are pitted with wells sunk after the fashion of the bedouin

In this rump the horizon is bounded by Al-Hara, the volcanic region whose black porous lavas and honeycomb basalts, often charged with white zeolite, are still brought down even to the coast to serve as mortars and hand mills. The profile is a long straight and regular line as if formed under water, capped here and there by a tiny head like the Syrian Kulayb Khoran. Its peculiar dorsum makes it distinguishable from afar and we could easily trace it from the upper heights of the Shahr.

It is evidently a section of the mighty platonic outburst which has done so much to change the aspect of the parallel Midian seaboard. While in its account of it, page 307 is confined to the place where he crossed the lava flood and he rendered Al-Hara, which in Arabic always applies to a burnt region, by a red-coloured sandstone.

The Bedouin far more reasonably declare that this harar is not a mere patch as it appears in Wallin's map, a narrow oblong, net exceeding 60 miles, northern latitude 27 to 28 degrees, disposed diagonally from north-west to south-east. According to them, it is a region at least as large as the Hizmar and it extends southwards not only to the parallel of Al-Madinah but to the neighbourhood of Yambu,

The upper region has two great divisions: the Herat Hizma or the Herar par excellence which belongs to the Ma'aza and which extends southwards through El Solesía as far as the Jaw. The latter region, a tract of yellow sand dotted with ruddy hills, apparently a prolongation of the Hizma, separates it from the Herat El Eweraz in which the Jebel al-Maharak lies.

This line of volcanism is continued south by the Harat al-Mujrif, Piyan al-Aman, by the Harat Sattu Jada and finally by the Harat al-Bahiri. The latter shows close behind the shore at Al-Hawra in nearly the same latitude as Al-Madinah where we shall presently sight it. There is great interest and a general importance in this large coast subtending eruptive range whose eastern counter slope demands long and careful study.

Sweeping the glance round to the south, we see the southern of the two djilsein, tall mounds of horizontal strata with ironstone in harder lines and finial blocks. This is the djilzal daim, so distinguished from the northern djilzal rawiyan. The lower edge of the hizma swells up in red and coin-like masses, the djibbel al zawiyah, and then falls suddenly with a succession of great breaks into the sub-maritime levels.

during our next ten days travel we shall be almost in continuous sight of its southern ramparts and buttresses far over the precipices lie the yellow sands of the raha ba alias the wadi dama and behind it rises the sky-blue mountain block which takes a name from the ruins of shahrab and

We breakfasted on the Greta Crest, and Mr. Clark set out to shoot the fine red-legged Greek partridges, kakabis, that haunt the hilltops, while the rest of us marched with a caravan to the nearest camping ground. About a mile from the call, and lying to the west of Gilles-al-Royan, it is supplied with excellent drinking water by the Miar El Jedid, lying 900 to 1000 metres to the southeast. On

on the other hand fuel here a necessary of life was wanting nor could the camels find forage thus we were camped upon the western edge of the hizmar the ma'aza sheikhs who vainly urged us forwards showed a suspicious disappointment at our not reaching their quarters on the far side where they said a camel was awaiting to be slaughtered for our reception meanwhile we were enjoying the reverse of hospitality

"'The Bedouin evidently now held "'that all which was ours had become theirs. "'Their excessive greed made them imprudent. "'Not satisfied with eating us up, "'with a coffee-pot ever on the fire, "'with demanding endless tobacco, "'and with making their two garands devour "'more barley than our eight mules, "'they began to debate aloud as usual "'how much more ready money they should demand. "'This was at last settled as $400, "'and the talk was reported to me "'by the Bashbazouk Hussain "'whom they had compelled to cook for them.'

at the same time unpleasant discussions were beginning this man stole my camel that man killed my father already took the form of threats in fact i almost repented having brought the huetat and their camels into the trap still they all respected forage as might be seen by their rising and making room for him whenever he approached the fire

at last an evil rumour arose that the ma'aza had determined to supply us with transport and had sent messages in all directions to collect the animals this step looked uncommonly like a gathering of war-men i was sorely disappointed for more reasons than one

The state of affairs rendered a distant march to the east highly unadvisable. The principal object of this journey had been to investigate the inland depth of the metalliferous deposits, in fact their extent from west to east. Their north-south length would be easily ascertained, but the width would still remain unknown. The land of Midian, through which we have been travelling, has evidently been worked, and in places well worked. Thus the only chance of finding a virgin California would be in the unknown tracts lying to the east of the Haraz.

Too bad to be thwarted in such a project by the exorbitant demands of a handful of thieves. The disappointment was aggravated by other considerations. From all that I had heard, the Hizma is a region full of archaeological interest. Already we were almost in sight of the ruins of Ro'afa, lying to the north between the two white dots El Rachamitain. Further eastward and north of the pilgrim station Zart Haj are the remains of Karaya, still unvisited by Europeans.

finally i had been shown when too late to inspect the place a fragment of an abathian inscription finely cut in soft white sandstone it had been barbarously broken and two other pieces were en route the stone is said to be ten feet long all covered with writings from which annalistic information might be expected it lies or is said to lie about two hours right north of our camp and beyond the gilles el rawian famed for

at first i thought of having it cut to portable size but second thoughts determined me to leave it for another visit or for some more fortunate visitor lastly we were informed a few weeks afterwards that the ma'aza sheikhs had carried it off to their tents i fear piecemeal it was not pleasant to be to retreat but under the circumstances what else could be done

no one was to be relied upon but the europeans and not all even of them the black escort emancipated slaves would have run away at the first shot except only acting corporal and when i told the officers assembled at metz that we should march back early next morning the general joy showed how little they relished the prospect of an advance then came out en masse the details many doubtless apocryphal which should have been reported to me and which had carefully been kept secret

The Ma'aza, when our messenger first notified our visit, had declared that they would have no Nazarenes in the mountains, that they did not care a fico for Egypt. Why had not Effendina written to them? They were his equals, not his subjects. It was then debated whether they should not raise a force of dromedary men to fall upon us. Some of them proposed to summon to their aid the rival chief, Ibn Hamas, but the majority thought it would be better to reserve themselves the hundred dollars per diem of which they proposed to fleeces.

"'Of course, everything around us was intrigue, "'the mayatahd al-tibn, "'water under the straw of the Arab saying. "'Faraj, it is true, looked serene, "'and privately offered me to fight the affair out, "'but he was alone in the idea. "'The Sayyid was tranquil, as usual. "'Hassan the Ukbi wore an unpleasant appearance of satisfaction, "'as if he had been offered a share in the plunder of the Huaytad, "'and Alayyan, a brave man on his own ground, "'could hardly conceal his dejection. "'I might, it is evident,'

have seized Sheikh Mohammed, placed a pistol to his ear, and carried him off a prisoner, but such grand moyo must be reserved for great occasions. The worst symptoms in camp that the Ma'aza at once knew the whole of my project, while the Egyptian officers were ever going to their tents, and one stayed talking with them till near midnight.

February 25th was a day of humiliation. I arrived at the camp at 4.30am and once gave orders to strike the tents and load. The command was obeyed in double quick time, but not before Sheikh Mohammed had visited us to propose a march to his home in the east. He was not comfortable. Probably his reinforcements had still to arrive. His face was calm, as the easterns generally is, but his feet trembled and his toes twitched. I dryly told him of our changed plans and he left us in high dudgeon.

the tragi-comedy which followed may be divided into six acts one the ma'aza mount their horses and camels i walk up to them and expostulate about so abrupt a departure without even drinking a friendly cup of coffee two they dismount and squat in council round the fire sending on three dromedary riders to crownhill commanding the pass the burning question is now whether armed clansmen are or are not lurking behind the heights

3. Sheikh Mohammed comes forward and demands blackmail to the extent of $200. I offer $100. 4. Our hosts break off the debate in a towering rage, refuse coffee, and declare that the caravan of Effendina, the viceroy, shall not be loaded. Mohammed's feet twitch more violently as the camels are made to kneel. 5. The caravan shows too much emotion. I pay the $200 into the chief's hands.

he at once demands his sharaf honour in the shape of a kiswah or handsome dress and that failing an additional twenty-five dollars for each of the five headmen i promise that a robe shall be sent from el mweila six the caravan sets out for the pass when the three dromedary riders open with the war-cry it is stopped with much apparatus by the sheikhs who affect to look upon it as dangerous

We now marched without delay upon the call, which was reached at 8.15am, Mohammed bin Atiyah having meanwhile disappeared. We descended the crate at Al-Jilz in 26 minutes and dismissed the remainder of our Ma'aza escort at the foot. I vainly offered them safeguard to Al-Muawiyah, which they had not visited for the last dozen years, all refused absolutely to pass their own frontiers. Au revoir, Mohammed bin Atiyah and company.

Having broken our fast and sent forward the caravan, we at once began to descend the southern pass, the Jaretat el-Zibar. Here, the watershed of the Wadi Sur heads and merchants object to travel by its shorter line because the camels must ascend two ladders of rocks instead of one at the top of Wadi Sadr. The call was much longer and but little less troublesome than its northern neighbour. The formation was the same and 45 minutes placed us in a gully that presently widened to a big valley, the Wadi Dihal or El Jaretat.

We reached it at 12.30pm and laid down the distance from the summit of the northern col at about five miles and a quarter. The air felt tepid, the sun waxed hot, drinking water was found on the left of the bed and a hole in the sole represented a spring which the people say is perennial. We were dismounting to quench our thirst at the latter when Juno plunged into it and stood quietly eyeing us with an air of intense satisfaction.

We spent that night at a place lower down the Wadi Dihal known as the Jabe al-Khureta, Collar of the Coll. The term Jabe is locally applied to two places only, the other being the Jabe al-Salua, which we shall presently visit. A larger feature than a Wadi, it reminds of a Zanofak broad, but it is of course waterless. Guards were placed around the camp, and a wholesome dread of the Ma'aza kept them wide awake.

the only evil which resulted was that none dared to lead our meals to water and the poor animals were hardly rideable on the next day of the hizmah in its present state we may say as of ushant ki voa oua ton voa la

nothing can be done towards working the mines of midian until this den of thieves is cleared out it is an asylum for every murderer and bandit who can make his way there a centre of turbulence which spreads trouble all around it under the sham rule of miserable sham syria with its turkish walis men like the late rashid pasha matters can only wax worse subject to egypt the people will learn discipline and cease to torment the land

Happily for their neighbours, there will be no difficulty in reducing the Maaza. They are surrounded by enemies and have lately been obliged to pay brother tax to the Ruala as a defence against being plundered.

The tributes consist of one piece of haircloth, about 20 cubits long. On the north, as far as El Ma'an, they meet the hostile Beni Saqr Jawazi under the Sheikh Mohammed ibn Jazi. Southwards, the Beli, commanded by Sheikh Afnan, are on terms of blood with them. Eastward stand the Anizar and the warlike Shararat Hoteim, who ever covered their 2,000 camels. Westward lie in wait their hereditary foes, the Huaytad.

Sheikh Farij, the tactician, has long ago proposed a general onslaught of his tribesmen by a simultaneous movement up the wadi's sur, sadr, unub and aval. They seem to have some inkling of his intentions, as they hasten to conclude with him a five-months' al-twa, or truce.

Finally, a small disciplined force marching down the Damascus-Medina pilgrimage road to the east and cooperating with the Hirtat on the west would place this vermin between two fires. The tale of my disappointment may conclude with an ethnological notice of those who caused it. The Maza is a Syro-Egypto-Bedouin clan, originally Arab or rather Syrian, but migratory as are all Arabs. It now extends high up the valley of the Nile and is still found in the Wadi Muzar of Suez and on the Zafrana block.

Even in Egypt, it is turbulent and dangerous. The men are professional robbers, and their treachery is uncontrolled by the Bedouin law of honour. They will eat bread and salt with a traveller whom they intend to murder. For many years, it was unsafe to visit the camps within sight of Suez until a compulsory residence at headquarters taught the Sheikhs manners.

The habitat in Arabia stretches from the Wadi Musa of Petra, where they are kinsmen of the Tiyaha, the Bedouin of the Tih desert, and through Ma'an as far as the Burqat al-Muazzama, south of Tabuk. Finally, they occupy the greater parts of the Hizmah and the northern Harar. According to Mohammed al-Khalb, these bandits own the lowest of blue blood.

Their forefather was one Wael, who left by his descendants two great tribes. The first and the eldest took a name from their Ma'az he-goats, while the junior called themselves after the Anaz she-goats. From the latter sprang the great Anizar family, which occupies the largest and choicest provinces of the Arabian Peninsula. Meanwhile, genealogists ignore the Ma'aza.

Walin would divide the tribe into two, the Ma'aza and the Ben-Atiyah of the latter in Midian. I could hear nothing except that they represent the kinsmen of the Sheikh's family. We find Ben-Atiyah in maps like that of Crichton's 1834 where the Ma'aza are laid down further south and northwards the Ben-Atiyah are a powerful clan who push their razzias as far as the frontiers of Moab.

My informants declare that the numbers of fighting men in the Midianite division of the race may be 2,000, query 200, and that they are separated only by allegiance to two rival sheikhs,

The greater half, under the Ibn Hormaz, is distributed into five clans, of whom the first, Orban Khumaesa, contained two septs. Under Muhammad Ibn Atiyah, Al-Kalb, they number also five divisions. Amongst them are the Sibut, or Beni Sabt, sons of the Sabbath, that is, Saturday, whom Welland suspects to be of Jewish origin, relying it would appear principally upon their name.

the ringing of the large bell suspended to the middle pole of the tents at sunset to hail the return of the camels and the mystic hour of descending night is an old custom still maintained because it confers a barakat or blessing upon the flocks and herds

Certainly there is nothing of the Bedouin in this practice, and it is distinctly contrary to the tradition of Islam, yet many such survivals hold their ground amongst the highly conservative wild men, and they must be looked upon only as local and tribal peculiarities. End of Volume 1. End of Chapter 10. End of The Land of Midian, revisited by Richard F. Burton.

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