134 And 136, That The Improvements Made
By This Spirited Woman—As The Wells Near Ghadir, And The Birkat (Tank)—Are
Now Ascribed To Her Weak, Fantastical, And Contemptible Husband.
Burton’S Description Of The Plain Covered With Huge Boulders And
Detached Rocks (P. 131) Puts Us In Mind Of
[P.404] the Felsenmeer in the Odenwald.
Yacut, vol. iii. p. 370,
describes the two most gigantic of these rock-pillars, which are too
far to the left of Burton’s road than that he could have seen them: “Below
Sufayna in a desert plain there rise two pillars so high that nobody,
unless he be a bird, can mount them; the one is called cAmud (column)
of al-Ban, after the place al-Ban, and the other cAmud of al-Safh. They
are both on the right-hand side of the (regular) road from Baghdad to
Meccah, one mile from Ofayciya (a station on the regular road which
answers to Sufayna).” Such desolate, fantastic scenery is not rare in
Arabia nor close to the western coast of the Red Sea. The Fiumara, from
which Burton (p. 138) emerged at six A.M., Sept. 9, was crossed by
Burckhardt at Kholayc, and is a more important feature of the country
than the two travellers were aware of. There are only five or six
Wadies which break through the chain of mountains that runs parallel
with the Red Sea, and of these, proceeding from south to north, Wady
Nakhla (Wady Laymun) is the first, and this Fiumara the second.
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