Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/268

220 for that little while, I thus revived the name borne by a much more distinguished traveller, the great Sheikh Abdullah, and although it was only stated to stop the curiosity of the Arabs we met, I soon found I was called nothing else.

At dawn we were up, and after feeding the camels and getting some coffee brewed we were ready to start at 8.30. During the whole journey I never could manage to get started much before this hour, as the Bedouins require some time to get the night chills out of their bones; the nights were certainly very cold and damp. Our track after crossing a plain struck a road coming from the north-west, and after rising a slight hill the country gradually became more and more sandy, all signs of cultivation gradually dying out, and the continual climbing up and down the sand dunes being most fatiguing and monotonous. At 12 o'clock the track changed direction to south-west, down an open valley amongst sand dunes called San'a el Men'al, and we camped in a little valley surrounded by the sand. Next morning the route was continued over sand dunes, and we came early to a considerable pool of rain-water called El Khubara; it is formed by the soil of Wâdy Abyad being turned by the Arabs into an old valley bed which is now closed, and they informed me it was kept full all the winter by rain-water coming down the wâdy. A few minutes further on is the first big valley since Wâdy Fara; it is called Wâdy el Abyad, Wâdy Khubara, and Wâdy ez Zayik, and runs with a broad bed through the sandhills to the north-west; there are many tamarisks and bushes along its course. Here we stopped for an hour to bake bread, and then leaving the valley crossed over more sandhills which seemed interminable. At last the country opened out, and after passing over some very broken ground we arrived at Wâdy el 'Arish.

The valley runs in a deeply-cut bed with mud banks; it is here about 80 yards wide. There was a pool of rain-water in a bend of the valley, which my guides informed me covered a well called Bir el Mujdebbah, and if my guides' account was true, that water could be got here all the year round; this is the only perennial source on this road as far as Ismailia.

After Wâdy el 'Arish the country opens out into a broad plain with an isolated small range of hills called Jebel el Bena in the centre. To the north there is a sandy covered range called Riza Anizeh, and to the south the high hills of Jebel Helah; a track leading away to the south-west between Jebel Bena and Jebel Helah through an open plain, led, I was told, to Suez. Here camp was pitched.