We
Ascended The Northern Extremity Of The Mountain By A Broad Road, And
After A March Of Eleven Hours Reached, On The Other Side, A Well Called
El Themmed (Arabic), Whose Waters Are Impregnated With Sulphur.
The
pilgrim caravan passes to the N. of the mountain and well, but the Arabs
who have the conduct of the caravan repair to the well to fill the water
skins for the supply of the Hadjis.
The well is in a sandy soil,
surrounded by calcareous rocks, and notwithstanding its importance,
nothing has been done to secure it from being choaked up by the sand and
gravel which every gust of wind drives into it. Its sides are not lined,
and the Arabs take so little care in descending into it, that every
caravan which arrives renders it immediately turbid.
The level plain over which we had travelled from Ras el Kaa terminates
at Dharf el Rokob. Westward of it the ground is more intersected by
hills and Wadys, and here begins the Desert El Ty (Arabic), in which,
according to tradition, both Jewish and Mohammedan, the Israelites
wandered for several years, and from which
ODJME
[p.449] belief the desert takes its name. We went this evening two hours
farther than the Themmed, and alighted in the Wady Ghoreyr (Arabic),
after a day’s march of thirteen hours and a half. The Bedouins, when
travelling in small numbers, seldom alight at a well or spring, in the
evening, for the purpose of there passing the night; they only fill
their water-skins as quickly as possible, and then proceed on their way,
for the neighbourhood of watering places is dangerous to travellers,
especially in deserts where there are few of them, because they then
become the rendezvous of all strolling parties.
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