ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 65 



riodically cool fountain of the Sun. The ruins of Ummibida (Omm- 

 Beydah) belong incontestably to the fortified caravanserai at the 

 temple of Ammon, and therefore to the most ancient monuments 

 which have come down to us from the early dawn of civilization. 

 (Caillaud, Voyage a Syouah, p. 14; Ideler in den Fundgruben des 

 Orients, bd. iv. s. 399-411.) 



The word Oasis is Egyptian, and synonymous with ,Auasis and 

 Hyasis (Strabo, lib. ii. p. 130, lib. xvii. p. 813, Cas.; Herod, lib. 

 iii. cap. 26, p. 207, Wessel). Abulfeda calls the Oases, el-Wah. 

 In the later times of the Caesars, malefactors were sent to the Oases; 

 being banished to these islands in the sea of sand, as the Spaniards 

 and the English have sent criminals to the Falklands or to New 

 Holland. Escape by the ocean is almost easier than through the 

 desert. The fertility of the Oases is subject to diminution by the 

 invasion of sand. 



The small mountain-range of Harudsh is said to consist of basaltic 

 hills of grotesque form (Bitter's Afrika, 1822, s. 886, 988, 993, 

 and 1003). It is the Mons Ater of Pliny; and its western extremi- 

 ty or continuation, called the Soudah mountains, has been explored 

 by my unfortunate friend, the adventurous traveller Ritchie. This 

 eruption of basalt in tertiary limestone, rows of hills rising abruptly 

 from dike-like fissures, appears to be analogous to the outbreak of 

 basalt in the Vicentine territory. Nature often repeats the same 

 phenomena in the most distant parts of the earth. In the limestone 

 formations of the " white Harudsh" (Harudje el-Abiad), which 

 perhaps belong to the old chalk, Hornemann found an immense 

 number of fossil heads of fish. Ritchie and Lyon remarked that 

 the basalt of the Soudah mountains, like that of the Monte Berico, 

 was in many places intimately mixed with carbonate of lime a 

 phenomenon probably connected with eruption through limestone 

 strata. Lyon's map even mentions dolomite in the neighbourhood. 

 Modern mineralogists have found syenite and greenstone in Egypt, 

 but not basalt. Possibly the material of some of the ancient Egyp- 

 tian vases, which are occasionally found of true basalt, may have 

 been taken from these western mountains. May " Obsidius lapis" 

 also have been found there? or are basalt and obsidian to be sought 

 for near the Red Sea ? The strip of volcanic or eruptive formations 



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