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And the produce of the "diggings" would naturally gravitate to El-Bada, the great commercial station upon the Nabathaan "Overland." Thus El-Marwah would signify "the Place of Maru," or "Quartz-land," even as Ophir means "Red Land."
There are, however, two scrapings evidently alphabetic, and probably Nabathaan, which are offered to the specialists in epigraphy: six appear in Wellsted's illustration, especially that with a long line above it, near the left and lower corner of the cut. M. Lacaze and I copied the most striking features in our carnets; he taking the right or southern side and leaving the other block to me.
It lies in north lat. 25 6', about the same parallel as El-Medinah; and in east long. As has been seen, the frontier is nearly fifty miles further north. He seems, finally, to have landed in order to inspect "a ruined town on the main," and to have missed it. According to Sprenger, the "White Village, or Castle," was not a Thamudite, but a Nabathaan port.
This is the only good approach to the secure and spacious bay that bore the southernmost Nabathaan port-town: there are northern and north-western passages, but both require skilful pilots; and every other adit, though apparently open, is sealed by reefs and shoals.
The other birds were ring-doves, turtles, and the little "butcher" impaling, gaily as a "gallant Turk," its live victim upon a long thorn. But both these cities were large and important centres, both of agriculture and of mining industry, forming crucial stations on the great Nabathaan highway, the overland between Leuke Kome and Petra.
Although the Meccan Ka'bah is, as its name denotes, a "cube," this square alabaster box did not give the impression of being either Arab or Nabathaan. The work is far too curiously and conscientiously done; the bases and drums, as the sundries carried to Cairo prove, look rather as if turned by machinery than chiselled in the usual way.
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