170 CHALLENGER 



ruins to bolster up the few habitable houses at its centre. To travel 

 the road to Khor is a slow business, for at each village the sheikh 

 or headman welcomes the traveller ; his coffee maker is awakened 

 and is soon hustling round with his battered coffee pot and a 

 handful of cups no bigger than egg-cups. Into these he pours the 

 dark brown liquid, which is strained as it leaves the spout by 

 some fine vegetable fibre lodged there for the purpose. The coffee 

 is strongly flavoured with cloves and bears little resemblance to 

 coffee as the westerner knows it. But it is refreshing, and one is 

 apt to forget that it is customary to refuse a third cup. 



Air photographs of the Qatar peninsula indicated the high 

 knolls and ridges that were the only features in the desert upon 

 which triangulation stations could be raised. The triangulation in 

 the form of quadrilaterals lay between the road and the sea, and 

 to reach these stations it was necessary to leave the road and 

 strike out across the stony desert ; sometimes the going was crisp 

 and fast, sometimes boulders the size of a football littered the 

 sand as far as the eye could carry and it was only possible to 

 cross this type of country in a jeep by going dead slow or at full 

 speed. Full speed too was needed to cross the areas of soft sand 

 into which the vehicle would sink axle-deep if speed was reduced. 



The inshore sounding and triangulation camp was set up this 

 year on the shores of Khor Shaqqiq, and so it was that two motor- 

 boats from the ship were feeling their way into the Khor one 

 sunlit day in January, 1 949 . The channel was narrow and tortuous, 

 with only about four feet of water. On either side coral heads and 

 amber-coloured coral flats lay shivering beneath the shallow water 

 in the light northerly breeze, which was blowing sufficiently only 

 to form the smallest waves upon the surface of the sea. Low cliffs 

 about five feet in height bordered the dun-coloured headlands, 

 which lay about half a mile to north and south of the channel. 

 Two porpoises moved with the boats, rising time and time again 

 just ahead and disappearing with short snorts like a man gasping 

 for breath; a solitary tern wheeled above them uttering its wild 

 shrieking cry. There was no other sign of life ashore or afloat. 

 Soon the channel bore round to starboard and led, between the 

 mainland and a somewhat hiaher island, into a landlocked har- 

 hour. The boats began to work along the south side of this bay 

 searching for a landing, but so shallow was it that they kept having 



