Page:The journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London. Volume 34, 1864. (IA s572id13663720).pdf/340

130 depression of the localities, but to the act of “descending” (we should say “alighting”) from one’s camel or horse on arriving at the place in question. One may thus say “nezel” or “descended,” when describing one’s visit to a town, e. g. at the very top of a mountain. In a word its force is circumstantial, not topographical, at least in Arabia. The true word for “descending” in the latter sense, of which it is here in question, is “anhader,” or “hader,” and that is never applied to “Nejed,” about which on the other hand they constantly say “talaa,” literally “he went up,” in a true and topographical sense. These terms may indeed be occasionally confounded in Syria or Egypt, where Wallin had, I suppose, learnt the language, but are never so in Arabia Proper.

I have said that the high land, or Toweyk itself, is generally of a calcareous character, though at times intermixed with granite; ferruginous sandstone and quartz also are occasionally to be met with—I found many indications of iron-ore in great quantity on its easterly limits, near Wadi Soley’; and, if I am not mistaken, of copper-ore also. The higher surface of the plateau is somewhat arid, and its vegetation, though enough to afford a sufficient pasture for the countless herds of camels and sheep-droves that graze throughout its extent, is not abundant or varied.

The few trees here met with are generally either the wide-spreading and thorny Talh, the branching Markh, and the light foliage and yellow flowers of the graceful Sidr. This is on the high grounds of the plateau, for the valleys present a very different vegetation. Sometimes a second steppe, more arid than the first, overtops it by 500 or 600 feet. The air is cool, almost bracing, and very dry.

Such are the heights of Nejed, mere pasture-land, and less fertile than healthy. But in every direction they are traversed by a network of valleys, full of life and culture. Sometimes in their abrupt and trench-like form they resemble the “nullas” of the Deccan; frequently open and broad, they attain a width of a league and more from bank to bank. Their white and precipitous sides give the appearance of being artificially cut out in the thickness of the plateau, though they are often broken by the furrows of winter-torrents pouring down over their ledges, and piling up irregular masses of rock and limestone in the valley below. It is to the sinuous lines of these hollow passes that the excavated steppe owes its labyrinthine appearance, and hence perhaps its appellation of Djebel Toweyk, i. e. “the mountain of the little convolution” or “entanglement.”

We may here notice that the diminutive nominal form, as “Toweyk” for “Towk,” “Loheym” for “Lahm,” “Roweys” for “Ras,” &c., &c., is very frequently, indeed almost affectedly, eni-