Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/333

Rh remarkably savage type, and their language, though not differing enough from the ordinary Arabic of the peninsula to merit the title of a distinct dialect, yet offers several peculiarities which puzzle the inhabitants of ’Oman and Nejed when they come in contact with these barbarians. These Bedouins are smaller in stature, and duskier in hue, than those of the north; some are even, as I have said before, entirely black, but that, again, is owing to a difference of race.

Enough of the desert. Let us now turn to a portion of Arabia less accurately known, I mean the Central Districts. I will first describe briefly their general conformation and features, and afterwards proceed to such details as the subject may require, or space permit.

The great table-land of Arabia, called by most writers, whether Arab or European, Nejed, does not, as some have asserted, commence with the Djowf, which is a hollow; whereas the Arab word “Nejed” denotes, on the contrary, “high-lands.” The Djowf is a long valley in the midst of the Stony Desert, situated at the southern extremity of Wadi Sirhan, and at an equal distance south-east and south-west from Damascus and Bagdad. Between it and Djebel Shomer lie the Nefood just described. Its average depth below the surrounding level is from 200 to 300 feet. It contains, besides the town of Djowf, itself a coalition of eight townlets into one, the large village of Sekakah, those of Djoon, Dorrah, and seven others. The total population is estimated at about twenty-eight thousand souls. This valley abounds in springs of water; it is fertile, and thickly planted with palm-groves and gardens. We remained here about twenty days, and then crossed the Nefood to Djebel Shomer. Here begin the first northerly limits of Nejed proper, assigned by the rise of the Shomer Mountains, whose long and craggy granite chain crosses more than half the peninsula in a direction of north-east by east, beginning in the neighbourhood of the upper Hejaz, and merging ultimately in the desert towards Coufa, now Meshid Alee. These mountains, or, to give them an exacter name, rocks, for they are hardly more, rise abruptly in steep and fantastic barrenness from the plain, and form the first bulwark of Nejed. Their greatest altitude does not exceed 1200 feet above the plain. Many of their topographical peculiarities, and even some of the towns and villages scattered amongst them, have been described by Wallin, but much would remain to say, did our limits here permit. The title of Shomer is applied in a political sense to that entire region of Northern Arabia which includes the Djowf, Teymah, Kheybar, Djebel Shomer, Salma, arid Upper Kaseem. All this, with the adjoining desert from Meshid’ Alee on the east to the great Hajj or Pilgrim-route on the west, is subject to Telal Ebn-Rashid, who resides in his capital Hā’yel