Three and a half hours after midnight we departed from this station:—from henceforth begin the great journeys of the Haj in Arabia. Little before day at a gunshot in front the caravan halted, and whilst we rested half an hour the great ones drink coffee. Two hours above the Akaba before us is a site, Khân ez-Zebîb; Mohammed Saîd Pasha in the last returning Haj, riding out upon his mare in advance of the caravan, (the Arabian spring already beginning), here lighted upon a great assembling of gazelles and killed with his pistol shots so many that venison was served that evening in all the great haj officers’ pavilions. We approached at noon the edge of the high limestone platform of J. Sherra, Masharîf es-Shem of the old Mohammedan bookmen, “The brow of Syria or the North.” And below begins Arabia proper, Béled el-Aarab:—but these are distinctions not known to the Beduish inhabitants.

The haj road descending lies in an hollow ground, as it were the head of a coomb, of sharp shelves of plate-flint and limestone. We are about to go down into the sandstones,—whereof are the most sands of Arabia. A ruinous kella and cistern are here upon our left hand. The caravan column being come to the head of the strait passage, we are delayed in the rear thirty minutes.