Page:The Northern Ḥeǧâz (1926).djvu/47

so that the gendarme Ismaʻin wished to proceed on foot rather than risk falling from the saddle and breaking his neck. I soon tamed the most spirited of the animals by compelling each one to gallop along with me. After ten minutes they were out of breath and after a quarter of an hour all the camels went along quietly. From 11.32 A. M. to 1.25 P. M. we halted on an extensive stretch of lowland covered with brushwood and prepared our lunch. Not far from us stood two dolmens (Fig. 3),
Fig. 3—Two dolmens south of Ḫabra Minwa’. the southern one being 2.1 m. high and the northern one 1.65 m. high, 0.7 m. broad at the bottom and 0.5 m. at the top, with a thickness of about 0.385 m. To the north of the dolmens the soil had been artificially hollowed out, and rain water had collected there. Eastward the plain was enclosed by the steep walls of aš-Šwêḥeṭ, which the narrow plain Ḫarm aẓ-Ẓbejʻâni separates from Wadʻat al-Ḥamra and al-Ḳennâṣijje. At three o’clock we reached the eastern spur of the flat ridge Ḥazm al-Čabd, the steep sides of which project as much as eighty meters above the plain. These consist of three yellowish strata with an occasional admixture of black stone upon which no grass or brushwood thrives. Cut in them, however, are some short, deep šeʻibân covered with brushwood. At 3.56 the furrowed region of Ṭubejž al-ʻAfar became visible, called al-ʻAfar (the white) because it contains numerous drifts of white sand. At 4.50 we halted near the southeastern spur of al-Čabd in the channel of a deep šeʻîb, in which our fire could not be seen. The camels were able to graze around the baggage. Not knowing whether a hostile band was still hidden somewhere close by, we did not venture to make a fire on the bank, nor did we allow the camels to graze on the uplands, where they would have been visible from afar at sunset.