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Further south the Tihamah Mountains begin with the peaky Jebel el-Kurr, another remarkable block which has long been in sight. Its neighbour is the bluff-headed Jebel el-Wasil of Marwat; whilst the trap-blocks, already mentioned as the Jibal el-'Akabil, finish the circle.
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."
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.
After three miles we passed, on the left, ruins of long walls and Arab Wasm, with white memorial stones perched on black. In front rose the tall Jebel Tulayh, buttressing the right or northern bank of the Damah; and behind it, stained faint-blue by distance, floated in the flickering mirage the familiar forms of the Tihamah range, a ridge now broken into half a dozen blocks.
He hoisted accordingly, and followed her as she walked on till she stopped at a grocer's, where she bought dry fruits and pistachio kernels, Tihamah raisins, shelled almonds and all wanted for dessert, and said to the Porter, "Lift and follow me."
Presently the hilly encasement of the Wady el-'Ajaj ended with El-'Adra, a red butte to the left, and the Jebel el-Yakhmum on the right. This knob was copiously veined with quartz, of which a prodigious depot, explored on the next day, exists in the heights behind it. The Wady now flares out; we have done with the Tihamah Mountains, and we are again in maritime South Midian.
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