1897] A Pitiless Desert 263 



to follow, and I cantered gaily on to find a camping place, where we 

 now snugly are, screened from the north-east wind. It is fortunate 

 we found the donkey track, or we might not have hit off the road. 

 Yemama is now in excellent condition, and ate up her two melwas of 

 corn during the night. The camels were all watered before starting. 

 At Bahreyn to-day I saw a kite and a raven. 



" I find Beseys is very unwilling now to go to Jerabub, being afraid, 

 I think, of displeasing the Akhwan. We have agreed to find out at 

 Zeytoun or Siwah whether Abu Seyf is at Jerabub or not, and to pass 

 by without alighting if he should be absent. 



" 25th Feb. — To-day we are in a worse plight than ever. We started 

 very early, taking up our path of yesterday, which brought us in a 

 couple of hours to the end of the limestone plain, and to my great de- 

 light to the edge of a new and very deep oasis which I knew must be 

 the Araj we were looking for. Araj has no lake, only a little standing 

 water and a tamarisk marsh. But a vast number of palms are scat- 

 tered over a wide basin with many isolated clumps, very beautiful, in 

 the sand. It was no case here of the nefud having destroyed the vil- 

 lages, as in the other oases, but of abandonment, one cannot say why. 

 There are palms enough left to support many villages. The cliffs here 

 are on the south and west sides, the sand slopes on the north and east. 

 Still on the track of the donkey and the two men we chevied along the 

 edge of the jungle north westwards, the ground covered with the tracks 

 of gazelles, hares, and jackals. Of birds I saw only three, mourning 

 chats, black with white beaks and rumps — nothing else alive. The 

 depth of the oasis puzzled my barometer. It must be about 150 feet 

 below the sea. From the bottom the track led up by some clumps of 

 palms, where I am sure there must be water underground, across deep 

 ncfuds to the opposite nukbe marked by some wonderful rocks — one 

 quite square, white as marble, and with curious architectural markings, 

 another like a tall chessman, both 100 feet high at least, their tops level 

 with the plain above, a splendid hermitage where one might find shade 

 and shelter at all hours and in every weather. They are geologically of 

 limestone, with layers of shells, their tops black, like lava. One layer 

 of the chessman, one of those round white flakes, Suliman calls dirahetn 

 (money). This place was the wildest, the most romantic, the most 

 supernatural in its natural structure I have ever seen, an abode of all 

 the Jan. 



" I cantered up the sand slope to the top of the pass, elated at having 

 found Araj corresponding so well with my map, and being in front 

 forgot to give orders for water to be looked for, and the girbehs filled. 

 Hence our present trouble. For on gaining the upper plain, instead of 

 the well-marked track we had expected, we found nothing but a wind- 

 swept plateau of nefud interspersed with mounds of stone, where the 



