When the day dawned, we departed: and soon there appeared before us the immane black platform of the Harra mountain; the large desert lying between seeming a hollowness below our feet, in which passes the haj road. Some miles further we saw two or three men skulking among the rocks far off, where we entered a cragged country; our company of five or six persons took them for habalis. We found before us the new sprung herb and better pasture than we had seen of late; but this soil is seldom visited by the Beduw,’unless, said Zeyd, when sometimes we are removing and encamping together with the W. Aly.’ Here near a main passage from the north, they were, although in their own dîra, in too much danger of robbers. In this sinking upland, grew certain tall white toadstools; some of our fellowship gathered them, and these, being boiled with alum in the urine of camels that have fed of the bush el-humth, yield they told me the gay scarlet dye of the Beduin wool-wives.

At mid-afternoon we passed before a wall of rock, where I perceived a well-traced antique inscription, nearly in the Naba tean character of Medáin Sâlih; this only, of all the desert legends, is contained in a border. As I leapt down of a sudden, my dizzy camel fled from me, but was out-ridden and turned by Zeyd upon his thelûl.