It is exactly two hours’ ride from Raḳḳah to the Belîkh. Our path lay between stretches of marsh, which must always have existed hereabout, for the word Raḳḳah means a swamp. Where we crossed the Belîkh it was a muddy brook, almost all the water having been drawn off for irrigation purposes, and the bridge was merely a few bundles of brushwood laid upon some poles. I sent the caravan down the bank of the Euphrates and taking one of my zaptiehs with me, turned slightly inland towards a group of hills called Jebel Munâkhir, the Nebs. In about two hours we reached a small outlying limestone tell on the top of which there were traces of masonry. Jebel Munâkhir, a mile or so from the tell, is an extinct volcano, and the lava beds extend almost to the tell. We climbed to the summit of the mountain and found the crater to be a distinctly marked basin with broken sides. On one of the peaks there is a ziyârah, a square enclosure made of undressed stones piled together without mortar, and a small tomb-chamber of the same construction. I looked carefully for any trace of ancient work, but my search was rewarded only by finding clumps of pale blue irises growing among the rocks. The west massif of Jebel Munâkhir, on which we were standing, rises several hundred feet above the level of the plain, and we had an extensive view over the unknown desert to the north. About three miles to the east lay another but smaller block of hill called Jebel Munkhar esh Sharḳî, the Eastern Neb, and on the horizon, almost due north, we could see some rising ground which my guide, an Arab of those parts, stated to be Jebel ’Uḳala.[51] Below it there are wells, and another well, Abu Tuṭah, lies between it and the Belîkh. Between Jebel Munâkhir and Jebel ’Abdu’l ’Azîz (which I could not see) there is a low ridge of hill, Jebel Beiḍâ. All through this desert country there are small wells of water (jubb is the Arabic word) sufficient to supply the ’Anazeh, who pasture their flocks here during the spring; I saw a few of their encampments, but the greater part of the tribe was still in winter quarters further to the east and south. The tents along the river were those of the ’Afaḍleh--’Ajeil el Ḥamrî is the chief sheikh of the tribe, but I did not happen to meet him. An hour’s ride from the hills we reached a large encampment at a spot called Ḳubûr ej Jebel, near the Euphrates. The name means the Graves of the Mountain, but I could not hear of any tombs in the neighbourhood. Our own tents were pitched an hour further down on some grassy mounds by the river far from any Arabs; Meiḍa, my guide called the place. In the low ground between Ḳubûr ej Jebel and Meiḍa, but above flood-water level, we crossed an area ringed round with a notable deep ditch. Somewhere near my camp Julian must have received his Arab reinforcements. On leaving Nicephorium, he marched along the bank of the Euphrates, “and at night he rested in a tent, where some princes