Page:The Northern Ḥeǧâz (1926).djvu/207

 ʻAṭâwne were pursuing us or not, we kept guard over our property during the night.

On Sunday, June 26, 1910, we were on the march as early as 4.25 A. M. The pathway led in a direction which was inconvenient for us because we were obliged to move due east across the sharp lava. The march was very difficult and painful for our camels. The poor animals had to pick their way forward through fragments of lava, cautiously stepping between them. After only a quarter of an hour, all the camels were bleeding from the hocks and joints of their feet, but the guide Sbejḥ assured me that it did them no harm. It would be a bad thing, he said, when the soles of their hoofs began to bleed.

At 5.15 we observed to the southeast two isolated knolls, the highest peaks of Mounts Nûf and Nuwejfât. From them there proceeds to the northwest the deep rift of the šeʻîb of Abu-l-Ḳawâṣîm, the lower part of which is known as Retâme. To the west we could see on the Sinai peninsula not only the mountains of the southern part of the peninsula but also the plain extending to the north of these mountains. Nearer to us towered the steep peaks of Ḥarb and Debbâṛ, and to the south we had a view of the greater part of the at-Tihama shore. We were traveling at a height of about 1460 meters. Around extended a lack, lifeless, slightly undulating plain that stretched beyond the limits of our vision. The deep, narrow ravines seemed to be blacker than the plain itself.

Before seven o’clock we came to the difficult descent into the ravine of al-Ḳena’ and at 7.33 we had reached the channel below. The ravine gradually grew wider, and at 7.40 on our right we saw a clump of ḥamâṭ (wild fig trees) and a few fine fig trees, by which we halted at 7.54 (temperature: 28.5° C). These trees are situated about a third of the way down the eastern slope and give shade to a copious spring which fills a pool of no great size about fifty meters distant, to which the water is conveyed by a trench. Near by were to be seen the remains of foundation walls, piles of unhewn stone, and the level sites of old gardens, a proof that a village had once been situated here. By the spring a number of women were