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In the evening we ascended the porphyry hills to the north of the little camping-basin; and we found the heights striped by two large vertical bands of quartz. We had a fine bird's-eye view of the Wady Rabigh, and of our next day's march towards the Shafah Mountains: the former was white with quartz as if hail-strewn.
High over and beyond the monarch of the Shafah Mountains, Jebel Sahharah, whose blue poll shows far out at sea, ran the red levels of the Hisma, backed at a greater elevation by the black-blue Harrah. The whole Tihamah range, now so familiar to us, assumed a novel expression.
We are now at a Bada <Arabic> which fulfils all the conditions required by the centre and head-quarters of "Thamuditis." The site of the Bujat Bada, "the Wide Plain of Bada," as it is distinguished by the Arabs, represents, topographically speaking, a bulge in the Wady Nejd, before it becomes the Wady Abu Daumah, between the Shafah Mountains to the east and the Tihamah range seawards.
At Bada old Shaykh 'Afnan, whose tents are now pitched one day ahead of us, was taken into consultation upon the subject. He confirmed these statements of the Wakil, adding that the Shafah Mountains are a mere ridge, not the seaward walls of a plateau, and that the land east of them is exactly that which we have already traversed.
The Wady Laylah, draining both the Shafah and the Tihamah ranges, including the block El-Ward, assumes, as usual, various names: we shall follow it till it is received into the mighty arms of the Wady Hamz, some three miles from the sea. After riding eight hours, we sighted the long line of Daum-palms which announce the approach to El-Birkah, "the Tank."
Further south we have noted how this tall eastern bulwark of the great Wady el-'Arabah bifurcates; forming the Shafah chain to the east, and westward of it, in Madyan Proper, the Jibal el-Tihamah, of which the Sharr is perhaps the culmination.
The track lay down the Wady Dahal and other influents of the great Wady Sa'luwwah, a main feeder of the Damah. We made a considerable detour between south-south-east and south-east to avoid the rocks and stones discharged by the valleys of the Shafah range on our left.
To the right rose the Jibal el-Tihamah, over whose nearer brown heights appeared the pale blue peaks of Jebel Sharr and its southern neighbour, Jebel Sa'luwwah. At nine a.m. we turned abruptly eastward up the Wady el-Sulaysalah, whose head falls sharply from the Shafah range.
At this season, and as long as the Baliyy are in the Shafah uplands, the almost deserted frontier districts, which we are about to enter, suffer from the Gaum, or razzia, of the neighbouring 'Anezah and the Juhaynah; the two tribes, however, not mixing.
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