1897J Wady Rayyan 253 



as myself.' Letters, too, have been written for the two principal 

 Bedouin Sheykhs of the Harabi in Jebel Akhdar, and I am to go on to 

 Benghazi if I like or return by Dernah and the sea route to Skanderia. 



' We started to-day at sunrise and I walked an hour or more on foot, 

 it being cold, before mounting my dclul. Our course south by west, 

 then turning more westward. A'fc eleven we came to the edge of Wady 

 Rayyan, a great chaotic depression from 50 to 150 feet below the Nile. 

 It is absolutely barren, and there is no trace in it of Nile mud or clay 

 of any kind, most of the surface soil being drift-sand and grit, with 

 'the bare limestone rocks showing here and there. This effectually 

 disproves the theory that Rayyan was the Lake Mseris of Herodotus, 

 it is nothing but a dried up sebkha, like the Jof and many another 

 desert depression. There are curious rocks in i't set in lines, which 

 look exactly like the remains of buildings ; but they are all, I think, 

 natural. Nor do I believe that any part of the Valley was ever in- 

 habited except perhaps by hermits, who planted the palm tress which 

 still struggle to live on near the springs. Descending into the belly of 

 the wady, we quickly found ourselves among nefuds (sandhills) which 

 run across it here and there in lines from north-west to south-east, 

 and make effective fortifications against camels. Here Suliman's desert 

 craft became of service (for the three Harabis with us were useless 

 for anything but pottering along a track) and he and I went forward 

 to look out the easiest places for the camels to cross, while in the 

 steepest Suliman and Eid made pa'ths for them slantwise in the deep 

 sand. The old camel man, Haj Abd-el-Rahman, not choosing to fol- 

 low us, was left behind, and we consequently had to camp some four 

 miles short of the main spring, but in a nice spot, a deep hollow under 

 sand hillocks and tarfa clumps. This part of the wady has vegetation, 

 tarfa, ghurkud, erta — none, however, in green leaf — much of it 

 dead, firewood abundan't. Barom. 50 feet below the Nile water at 

 Kasr-el-Jibali. 



"13th Feb. — At sunrise we started, after a good night's rest for 

 me under my hejeyra (my carpet shelter, the one with a scorpion 

 worked on it), and on to the spring. This lies due south of the khusm 

 (snout) of Rayyan, at the extreme edge of the vegetation, a number 

 of bush palms together, with a lovely spring welling up in a sand- 

 bottomed basin, the water running in a little stream for twenty yards, 

 when it disappears. The two Harabis, Beseys and Minshawi, attribu'te 

 to it miraculous virtues. The water only runs, they say, when travel- 

 lers come to drink, and it varies in volume with the number of their 

 camels. When there are many camels you have only to encourage it 

 by calling to i't ' Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ! ' and it comes bubbling up so fast 

 that you can water 200 camels in the afternoon. It is hot by night, 

 cold by day. To-day, the wind being cold, it was lukewarm, rather 



