Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/248

204 Next day our road led down Wâdy Zelegah, which bends towards the east, about a mile from the camping ground; and where the bed of the valley opens out Armstrong came across a stone circle almost buried in the sand, the top of the stones only being visible. Striking across to the eastern side of the valley, where a detached piece of rock stands conspicuously out, he found some Arabic inscriptions and a lot of figures, chiefly animals, rather roughly carved out on the face of the rock. The valley, though bounded by steep cliffs, has an open, level, and wide bed, which is one of the principal features of the wâdies in all this region, making the passage of even very mountainous districts easy for animals and even possible for wheeled traffic. No valley of importance joins the wâdy from a continuous line of high hills with cliff, cutting off all communication up that side.

Camp was pitched at the end of this range of hills opposite the broad mouth of Wâdy Biyar, where there is an open space with an isolated hill in the centre. Wâdy Abu Tareifeh here comes in from the south-west, joining Wâdy Ughelim from the south, and flows into Wâdy Zelegah; the valley here takes the name of Wâdy Biyar, and after a few miles turns to the north at a point where there are some nawâmîs.

These nawâmîs are small round circles of stones, some of them built up into a dome shape, having a small entrance on one side; they are a great deal too small for human dwellings, and they are not, as far as one can judge, tombs. They occur in many places in the peninsula, and are generally in groups; there are visually some traces of ruined walls about. The entrance is not in any particular direction; the stones are small, and have not any appearance of having stood from very remote antiquity. I have never seen the question of their origin satisfactorily explained.

While travelling subsequently through the country to the south-east of Gaza on my way to Ismailia, I noticed the Arabs cultivating the ground extensively; they live, of course, entirely in tents, and the barley they grow is sent in to market, but the chopped straw is made up into numbers of small heaps on the ground and covered with earth, forming little domes exactly like the nawâmîs. There are few stones on the Gaza plain, and little earth to spare in the wâdies of the peninsula. I would suggest that they are stone houses of the Arabs when they cultivated these wâdies, probably not very long ago. I saw no traces of cultivation now, but there are many places that would repay the labour well; and, as far as I can judge, nawâmîs are usually found not far from some spot of this sort.