Hamd, and promising to join us lower
down, as his tent was not far distant. Instead, however, of going home,
he ran straight to the Arabs assembled at Sheikh Szaleh, and acquainted
them with my designs. Their chiefs immediately dispatched a messenger to
Feiran to enjoin the people there to prevent me from ascending Serbal;
but,
WADY SOLAF
[p.597] fortunately, I was already on my way to the mountain when the
messenger reached Feiran, and on my return I had only to encounter the
clamorous and now fruitless expostulations of the Arabs at that place.
We began to descend from the top of Nakb el Raha, by a narrow chasm, the
bed of a winter torrent; direction N.W. by N. At the end of two hours
and a quarter we halted near a spring called Kanaytar [Arabic]. Upon
several blocks near it I saw inscriptions in the same character as those
which I had before seen, but they were so much effaced as to be no
longer legible. I believe it was in these parts that Niebuhr copied the
inscriptions given in plate 49 of his Voyage. From the spring the
descent was steep; in many parts I found the road paved, which must have
been a work of considerable labour, and I was told that it had been done
in former times at the expense of the convent.
