Page:The Northern Ḥeǧâz (1926).djvu/51

 well is between three and four meters deep and after a heavy rain is filled with water to a depth of one meter. If it does not rain copiously for two or three years the water dries up. In the immediate vicinity there is an abundant growth of baʻêṯrân.

Having let the camels drink and after filling our goatskin bags with water, we moved on at 8.40 and by numerous windings reached the summit, along which we proceeded in a west-southwesterly direction. From 9.32 to 11.05 we let the camels graze, while we drew a sketch of the southern region. At twelve o’clock we reached the very edge of the slope which falls steeply towards the south and saw beneath us on the plain of al-Maẓlûm large green expanses that reminded us of our own fields of central Europe. They were densely covered with the plants known as semḥ. In the lower places the semḥ was dark green, while on the borders higher up, where the moisture had already evaporated, it was beginning to grow yellow and ripe. Bluish sandstone rocks enclosed the semḥ-covered plains. Farther to the south there extended olive-colored cones, horns, and ridges, with pink slopes, which seemed to throb in the burning and almost visible rays of the noonday sun. All the sides facing the northwest were covered with yellowish sand, while the eastern and northeastern sides had a dark brown gloss, and on some of them blood-red stripes could be distinguished. At two o’clock Mḥammad pointed out to me, far in the south, the sharp, jagged peaks of al-ʻÂǧât and, to the northwest of them, two cones and seven dome-shaped groups which formed Šeʻaṯa. To the southwest of us and quite close by, there arose the three tabular hills of aṯ-Ṯlejṯwât, which at times disappeared in the quivering haze and at other times assumed gigantic shapes which appeared to change their positions. The undulating upland of al-Čabd gradually merges into the plain of ar-Râṭijje, inclining to the north toward the šeʻîb of Ammu Mîl but falling steeply toward the south. In places the stony soil is so eaten away by wind and rain that it appears to have been artificially paved. In places, too, it is covered with coarse gravel in which the only growing things are small groups of daʻâʻ, a species of semḥ. In a few shallow declivities there thrive mti, rûṯe, mrâr, and ḳnêfḏe, which the Ḥwêṭât call čaff marjam.

At 2.45 P. M. Mḥammad showed me, to the south at the