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The palm-trees, deprived of irrigation, all died; and Bujat-Bada, the beautiful, became a wilderness. About twenty years ago, the wells were reopened and the dates were replanted. So much for the past: as for the future, we may safely predict that, unless occupied by a civilized people, the Bada plain will again see worse times.
The parallelogram between north lat. 26 degrees, including the mouth of the Wady Hamz, and north lat. 27 , which runs some fifteen miles north of the Bada plain, would form a Southern Grant, sufficiently large to be divided and subdivided as soon as judged advisable.
The Bedawin, still relegated to the upper country, were sending their scouts to ascertain if the water-supply was sufficient in Bada plain. The adjacent valleys were dotted with she-camels and their colts. The adult animal here sells for twelve to thirty dollars.
Nothing would be easier than to rebuild the town, and to prepare the basin for irrigation and cultivation; but destruction is more in the Bedawi line. Before leaving Bada I was careful to make all manner of inquiries concerning stone-coal; and the guides confirmed the suspicions which had long suggested themselves.
"Very well, signorina, but you are becoming too devout. Bada, figlia mia!" Siena is a city dedicated to the Virgin, and the feast of her Assumption is the greatest of all her red-letter days. The streets had echoed at dawn to the feet of contadini coming in by the Porta Romana, the Porta Camollia, the Porta Pespini.
Along the eastern side are huge standing slabs of the coarse new sandstone with which the tank is lined: these may be remains of a conduit. Around the cistern lies a ruined graveyard, whose yawning graves supplied a couple of skulls. The mining industry could not have been a prominent feature at Bada, or we should have found, as in Shaghab and Shuwak, furnaces and scoria.
The immediate objective of this, our last march, was the Bada plain, of which we first heard at Shaghab. I purposed subsequently to collect specimens of a traditional coal-mine, to which his Highness the Viceroy had attached the highest importance. Then we would march upon the Mochoura of the ancients, the mediaeval El-Marwah or Zu Marwah, the modern Marwat-cum-Aba'l-Maru.
We were disappointed, by the sinister wind, in our hopes of collecting a bottle of rain-water for the photographer; nor did the storm, though it had all the diffused violence of a wintry gale, materially alter the weather. The only Bedawi tradition concerning the Bada' plain is the following.
Fazir Khan looked up sharply at Lewis, then laughed, and spoke something to his men in his own tongue. Lewis comprehended barely a few words of Chil, the Bada tongue, and he knew little of the frontier speeches. But to his amazement the chief addressed him in tolerable, if halting, English.
Presently, where the pretty green Wady el-Suram falls into the left bank, we turned a corner, and sighted in front, or to the north, the great plain of Bada. The block, El-'Akabil, had projected a loop of some ten miles to be rounded, whereas a short cut across it would not have exceeded three. And now the Wady Aba Daumah abruptly changed formation.
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