After A Day's Rest--Physical Not Spiritual, For The Somal Were As Usual Disputing Violently About The Abbanship [17]--I Went With My Comrades To Visit An Interesting Ruin Near The Town.

On the way we were shown pits of coarse sulphur and alum mixed with sand; in the low lands senna and colocynth were growing wild.

After walking a mile south-south-east, from present Berberah to a rise in the plain, we found the remains of a small building about eight yards square divided into two compartments. It is apparently a Mosque: one portion, the sole of which is raised, shows traces of the prayer niche; the other might have contained the tomb of some saint now obsolete, or might have been a fort to protect a neighbouring tank. The walls are of rubble masonry and mud, revetted with a coating of cement hard as stone, and mixed with small round pebbles. [18] Near it is a shallow reservoir of stone and lime, about five yards by ten, proved by the aqueduct, part of which still remains, to be a tank of supply. Removing the upper slabs, we found the interior lined with a deposit of sulphate of lime and choked with fine drift sand; the breadth is about fifteen inches and the depth nine. After following it fifty yards toward the hills, we lost the trace; the loose stones had probably been removed for graves, and the soil may have buried the firmer portion.

Mounting our mules we then rode in a south-south-east direction towards the Dubar Hills, The surface of the ground, apparently level, rises about 100 feet per mile.

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