The Egyptian Pilgrims Take A More Northern
Route, But The Arabs Who Accompany Them Fill The Water Skins For The Use
Of The Caravan At These Wells, And Rejoin The Hadj By The Route We
Travelled This Morning.
Near the wells are the ruins of a small
building, with strong walls, which was probably constructed for the
defence of the water, when the Hadj was still in its ancient splendour.
ADJEROUD
[p.454] On quitting the wells we turned off in the direction of Suez,
our route lying W.N.W. There are no traces of a road here, for the track
of caravans is immediately filled up by the moving sands, which covered
the plain as far as I could discern, and in some places had collected
into hills thirty or forty feet in height. At ten hours from our setting
out in the morning we entered a plain covered with flints, and again
fell in with the Hadj road. Here we took a W. by N. direction. At the
end of eleven hours the plain was covered with a saline crust, and we
crossed a tract of ground, about five minutes in breadth, covered with
such a quantity of small white shells, that it appeared at a distance
like a strip of salt. Shells of the same species are found on the shores
of the lake of Tiberias. Once probably the sea covered the whole of this
ground. At twelve hours and a half Suez bore S. about an hour and an
half distant from us.
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