Hai[FN#9]!” and
an occasional switching. Shaykh Abdullah the Asiatic commended himself
to Allah by repeated ejaculations of Ya Satir! Ya Sattar[FN#10]!
[p.134]The morning of Wednesday (September 7th) broke as we entered a
wide plain. In many places were signs of water: lines of basalt here
and there seamed the surface, and wide sheets of the tufaceous gypsum
called by the Arabs Sabkhah shone like mirrors set in the russet
framework of the flat. This substance is found in cakes, often a foot
long by an inch in depth, curled by the sun’s rays and overlying clay
into which water had sunk. After our harassing night, day came on with
a sad feeling of oppression, greatly increased by the unnatural glare:—
“In vain the sight, dejected to the ground,
Stoop’d for relief: thence hot ascending streams
And keen reflection pain’d.”
We were disappointed in our expectations of water, which usually
abounds near this station, as its name, Al-Ghadir, denotes. At ten A.M.
we pitched the tent in the first convenient spot, and we lost no time
in stretching our cramped limbs upon the bosom of mother Earth.
