This Is A Broad Valley, With
Steep Though Not High Cliffs On Both Sides.
The rock is calcareous, and
runs in even horizontal layers.
Just over the road, a place was shewn to
me from whence, some years since, a Bedouin of the Arabs of Tor
precipitated his son, bound hands and feet, because he had stolen
WADY HOMMAR
[p.476] corn out of a magazine belonging to a friend of the family. In
the great eastern desert the Aeneze Bedouins are not so severe in such
instances; but they would punish a Bedouin who should pilfer any thing
from his guest’s baggage.
April 28th.—We set out before dawn, and continued for three quarters of
an hour in the Wady, after which we ascended E. b. S. and came upon a
high plain, surrounded by rocks, with a towering mountain on the N.
side, called Sarbout el Djemel [Arabic]. We crossed the plain at sun
rise; and the fresh air of the morning was extremely agreeable. There is
nothing which so much compensates for the miseries of travelling in the
Arabian deserts, as the pleasure of enjoying every morning the sublime
spectacle of the break of day and of the rising of the sun, which is
always accompanied, even in the hottest season, with a refreshing
breeze. It was an invariable custom with me, at setting out early in the
morning, to walk on foot for a few hours in advance of the caravan; and
as enjoyments are comparative, I believe that I derived from this
practice greater pleasure than any which the arts of the most luxurious
capitals can afford. At two hours and a half the plain terminated; we
then turned the point of the above-mentioned mountain, and entered the
valley called Wady Hommar [Arabic], in which we continued E. b. N. This
valley, in which a few acacia trees grow, has no perceptible slope on
either side; its rocks are all calcareous, with flint upon some of them;
by the road side, I observed a few scratchings of the figures of camels,
done in the same style as those in Wady Mokatteb copied by M. Niebuhr
and M. Seetzen, but without any inscriptions. At four hours we issued
from this valley where the southern rocks which enclose it terminate,
and we travelled over a wide, slightly ascending plain of deep sand,
called El Debbe [Arabic], a name given by the Towara Bedouins to several
other sandy districts of the same kind.
WADY EL NASZEB
[p.477] The direction of our road across it was S. E. by S. At six hours
and a half we entered a mountainous country, much devastated by
torrents, which have given the mountains a very wild appearance. Here
sand-stone rocks begin. We followed the windings of a valley, and in
seven hours and a quarter reached the Wady el Naszeb [Arabic], where we
rested, under the shade of a large impending rock, which for ages,
probably, has afforded shelter to travellers; it is I believe the same
represented by Niebuhr in vol.
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