Page:The Northern Ḥeǧâz (1926).djvu/72

 tokens (awsâm). The night was quite cold, as a moist west wind was blowing.

On Friday, June 3, 1910, we led our camels in a southerly direction from 4.42 A. M. to 5.23 (temperature: 12°C). As far as the well of aṭ-Ṭarîf the road was very trying, as it wound among large boulders and fragments of rock, which often completely filled the river bed. The well Bîr aṭ-Ṭarîf, situated almost exactly on the watershed between the valleys of Abu Ṛarab and al-Jitm, is about three meters deep and four meters broad and contains pure fresh water. Eastward of it rise several piles of rock, the ruins of an old building, to the northeast of which can be seen the yawning black mouths of the Harâb al-Bḥejra caves.

At 5.30 we rode through the broad hollow of al-Mesann, which on the left joins the šeʻîb of aṭ-Ṭarîf. A few meters farther to the south we saw the remains of a broad dam by which the šeʻîb had been transformed into a capacious rain pond. From the left-hand side of this pond the water passed through a narrow canal into gardens that were laid out in terraces. To the south we could see the Ḥesma territory, lying at a great depth beneath us and swathed in a dense covering of morning mists, from which projected only the highest peaks, cones, pyramids, obelisks, and numerous other forms which the isolated rocks assumed. The rays of the rising sun struck upon them so that it seemed as if their angular faces were burning. In the river bed of aṭ-Ṭarîf grow ratam shrubs and low šîḥ. On the slopes ʻArḳûb al-Mšejṭi, as well as on al-Mrejbeṭ and az-Zaʻtar, there are supporting walls of varying length, the remains of old gardens. At six o’clock we rode along the right-hand side of the river bed at the foot of the granite ridge of al-Mrejbeṭ, as we wished to avoid the numerous short ravines running down from the soft limestone slopes of az-Zaʻtar. These are twenty to thirty meters deep, scarcely three meters broad at the bottom, and their sides are formed of yellowish clay and soft white limestone. Suddenly the river bed leaves the foot of al-Mrejbeṭ and cuts through the soft limestone in a gorge about fifty meters deep. At 6.48 A.M. we made our way into it near the spring of al-Ḥelwa, which gushes out from the left-hand side and fills numerous pools (Figs. 14,15).