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Behind us lies the Tihamat-Balawiyyah, the equivalent of the Ghats of North Midian, from the Zahd to the Sharr. The items are the little Jebel 'Antar, which, peeping over the Fiumara's high left bank, is continued south by the lower Libn.
The latter attaches to the higher Libn, whose triad of peaks, the central and highest built of three distinct castellations, flush and blush with a delicate pink-white cheek as it receives the hot caresses of the sun. We are now haunted by the Libn, which, like its big brother the Sharr, seems everywhere to accompany us.
They have extended, probably in ancient times, to Upper Egypt, and occupy parts of Nubia; about Sawakin they are an important clan. They number few in the Sinaitic Peninsula and in Midian, but they occupy the very heart of the Arabian Peninsula. Those settled on Jebel Libn, we have seen, claim as their kinsman the legendary 'Antar, who was probably a negro of the noble Semitic stock.
The complexion of the Libn, which the people pronounce "Libin," suggests grey granite profusely intersected with white quartz: hence, probably, the name, identical with Lebanon and Libanus "the Milk Mountain." The title covers a multitude of peaks: the Bedawin have, doubtless, their own terms for every head and every hollow.
This Jebel Libn, along which we are now steaming, is a counterpart on a small scale, a little brother, of the Sharr, measuring 3733 instead of 6000 to 6500 feet. We first see from the north a solid block capped with a mural crown of three peaks.
Northernmost, and prolonging the Libn, that miniature Sharr, is the regular wall of the Jebel el-Ward; then come the peaks and pinnacles of the Jibal el-Safhah; and lastly, the twin blocks El-Ral, between which passes the Egyptian Hajj when returning from El-Medinah. Faint resemblances of these features sprawl, like huge caterpillars, over the Hydrographic Chart, but all sprawl unnamed.
Stony ramps, stiff as those of Gibraltar, connect the low with the high town, the cool breezy new settlement upon the crest of the northern cliff, whose noble view of the Jebel Libn and the palm-scattered Wady el-Wijh were formerly monopolized by the fort and its round tower.
Here the coast-range again veers off eastward; and the regular line is cut up into an outbreak of dwarf cones, mere thimbles. Above the gloomy range that bounds it southwards, appear the granitic peaks and "Pins" of Jebel Libn, gleaming white and pale in the livid half-light of a cloudy sunset.
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