Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/330

120 luckless companions, and the doubly-betrayed survivors had to beg their long way back to Meshid-Alee and Persia as best they might.

These incidents may give an idea of the nature and perils of the Arabian “Nefood.” The prodigious depth of their sandy stratum, often not less than many hundred feet, so far as I could ascertain by comparative observations, renders water, of course, out of the question for the most part; and this, along with the extreme heat of such tracts, the want of pasture, the total absence of anything like shade or shelter, and the labour of wading now up, now down, through the mountain-waves of loose and scorching sand, render their passage no easy and even no very safe matter, especially in the hot summer months.

These dreary characteristics are not, however, without occasional and favourable exceptions. Now and then, in the very midst of the sandy ocean, its waves recede on either side, and leave a sort of conical hollow of great depth (I have seen some of fully 400, or even 500 feet, in perpendicular depression), at the base of which appears a substratum, sometimes of granite, sometimes of calcareous rock, between the clefts of which, or in the wells excavated by Arab labour, water is generally to be found. Such spots, being the only places of rest and supply, determine the direction of the traveller’s course in these regions; but few—only those, in fact, whom long experience has rendered familiar with their position— know where to look for them; the more so because nothing indicates their proximity, even at a very moderate distance: and hence arises the absolute necessity of experienced and faithful guides for traversing the “Nefood.”

At other times a bold peak of black rock pierces through the sand, and breaks the weary monotony of the view. Such are the two isolated rocks rising in the “Nefood” about half-way between the Djowf and Djebel Shomer, and named ’Aalam Es-Sa’ad. We passed between them when on our way southward from the Djowf, and were much struck by their symmetrical and pyramidal form. In my further course I met with a similar peak in the “Nefood” adjoining the province of Woshern.

The symmetrical undulations of the sand have found in their parallelism with the axis of the earth a tolerably plausible explanation, derived from the inequality of the rotatory movement of the globe when communicated through the hard rocky base to the loose and sliding mass of sand above. As these regions are comparatively near the Equator, the rapidity of diurnal rotation is greater, and the phenomena consequent on it are, of course, more prominent here than in corresponding localities further north. The gigantic and regular furrows of the “Nefood” are very distinct from the capricious ridges seen elsewhere, and arising from the action