2&2 The Sittarah Oasis [!897 



nefud, where I spent the night alone with Suliman and our two nagas. 

 Of all the hermitages I have yet found this is the best. It is never 

 visited by man. There are no Arabs anywhere within a hundred miles, 

 and it is very beautiful — a winter hermitage, I mean, for in summer 

 it must be a furnace. It is hot even now. 



" 2yd Feb. — After a delightful night I walked at sunrise to the top 

 of the highest nefud, from which the whole lake can be seen. It is 

 very interesting. Clearly the Oasis has been inhabited, but has been 

 overwhelmed by the nefnds advancing on it from the south and west. 

 The lake may be seven miles long, and is very beautiful. The northern 

 shore is bounded by low cliffs, the ancient limit doubtless of the lake, 

 which is shrinking, and will some day be a mere chaos of nefud, as so 

 many others are. It was somewhere in this desert, they say, that 

 Cambyses disappeared with his army. I can well believe it, for we 

 were within a little of such a misfortune two days ago. If the weather 

 had been less clear and cool I could not have seen the valley, and with 

 a sand wind we might easily have perished. Now all seems easy and 

 delightful. In the afternoon I went out for a ride, intending to visit 

 the pyramidal hill, but got into a quicksand, crossing over a half dry 

 arm of the lake, out of which I had some difficulty in dragging my 

 mare. The blackbird I saw again at the same place, and a kestrel. It 

 is so hot to-day that I had the tent pitched for a shade — the first time 

 we have used it, as I sleep under my carpet shelter. The barometer 

 shows the lake to be 120 feet below sea level. 



" 24th Feb. — Started at sunrise, believing our difficulties to be now 

 over, but we took a wrong track, which led us south-west instead of 

 farther north, towards some distant palms we had sighted an hour after 

 leaving. This took us to what I believe to be the oasis of Bahreyn — 

 at least such an Oasis is marked on my map. [N.B. A very excellent 

 German map.] This Oasis is very like Sittarah, though with two lakes 

 instead of one — whence its name. Osman pronounced this to be 

 Araj, and said we were now close to Zeytoun and Siwah, which I knew 

 could not be the case, and was sure when we came to the second lake 

 it could only be Bahreyn. The road, too, westwards, we found blocked 

 by a great scbkha (a dry salt marsh), and we were obliged to turn 

 north and travel several hours to recover the right road. Fortunately 

 we fell in soon with the track of a donkey, and two men who had been 

 to the oasis, we think, to gather dates, a track of about ten days old, 

 which we followed. The barometer at Bahreyn showed exactly o° 

 above the sea. The donkey track led us to a nukbeh, where we fell 

 in with a well-marked road bearing north-west by north over a plateau 

 of limestone hillocks, each about ten feet high, like the crested waves 

 of the British Channel in rough weather, with the space between them 

 sand. The road was carefully marked with rijms (cairns), and easy 



