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A cursory inspection of Shaghab removed some of the difficulties which had perplexed us at Shuwak and elsewhere. In the North Country signs of metal-working, which was mostly confined to the Wadys, have been generally obliterated; washed away or sanded over. Here the industry revealed itself without mistake.
I did not learn till too late that a single day's march southwards from the Wady Shuwak, along the old main line of traffic, leads to the Wady Nejd, upon whose upper course is the plain of Bada; and which, after assuming four different names, falls, as will be seen, into the sea about thirty-five miles north of El-Wijh.
How is it that the annalists say nothing of them? that not a vestige of tradition remains concerning any race but the Nazarenes? From Shuwak to the Wady Damah there are two roads, a direct and an indirect; the latter passing by the ruins of Shaghab. The caravan begged hard to take the former, but was summarily refused.
The site of Shuwak is a long island in the broad sandy Wady of the same name, which, as has been remarked, feeds the Damah. Its thalweg has shifted again and again: the main line now hugs the southern or left bank, under the slopes and folds of the Jebel el-Sani'; whilst a smaller branch, on the northern side, is subtended by the stony divide last crossed.
At six a.m. we rode down the Shuwak valley, again noting its huge constructions, and then striking away from it to the left, we passed over a short divide of brown hill, where the narrow Pass was marked only by Bedawi graves. The morning showed a peculiar rainbow, if a bow may be called so when no rain appeared; a perpendicular stripe, brilliant enough, and lasting at least twenty minutes.
The characteristic rock is a conglomerate of large and small stones, compacted by hard silicious paste, and stained mauve-purple apparently by manganese: we had seen it on the way to Shuwak; and the next day's march will pave the uplands with it.
After some six miles we attempted a short cut, a gorge that debouched on the left bank of the Shuwak valley. It showed at once a complete change of formation: the sides were painted with clays of variegated colours, crystallized lime and porphyritic conglomerates, tinted mauve-purple as if by manganese.
He arrived in camp, none the worse for a well-developed "cropper;" his dromedary had put its foot in a hole, and had fallen with a suddenness generally unknown to the cameline race. By way of geographical exercitation, we had all drawn our several plans, showing, after Arab statement, the lay of Shaghab and Shuwak, the two ruins which we were about to visit.
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.
This section, Shuwak proper, is nearly a mile and a half long, and could hardly have lodged less than twenty thousand souls. But that extent by no means represents the whole; our next march will prolong it along the valley for a total of at least four miles.
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