The region east of Wady Dauasir is called Aflaj or Felej-el-Aflaj, two days’ journey distant, here there are also palm-oases. It is six days’ journey thence to Riad, but the way is rugged, without villages.[44] It was along Wady Dauasir that I had hoped to make the overland journey from Sana to Bahrein in 1894, once beyond Turkish espionage the way would have been open. According to the testimony of Halévy the inhabitants of Nejran and Wady Dauasir are not fanatical. Nowhere in Yemen are the Jews treated so kindly as by the Arabs of Nejran. This entire region must also be classed with the fertile districts of Arabia. Water is everywhere abundant coming down from the Jebel Rian, fifteen days’ journey from Toweyk and from the southern ranges of Jebel Ban and Jebel Tumra. The inhabitants of Nejran and of Southern Dauasir are heretical Moslems. They belong to the Bayadhi sect like the people of Oman,[45] and are supposed to be followers of Abd-Allah-bin-Abad (746 A. D.). Historically, Nejran is of special interest because here it was that the Roman army of 11,000 men sent by Augustus Cæsar under Ælius Gallus to make a prey of the chimerical riches of Arabia Felix came to grief. The warriors did not fall in battle but, purposely misled by the Nabateans, their allies, they marched painfully over the waterless wastes in Central Arabia six months; the most perished in misery and only a remnant returned. Strabo, writing from the mouth of Gallus himself, who was his friend and prefect of Egypt, gives a description of the Arabian desert that cannot be improved: “It is a sandy waste with only a few palms and pits of water; the acacia thorn and the tamarisk grow there; the wandering Arabs lodge in tents and are camel graziers.” Nejd—the heart of Arabia, the genuine Arabia, the Arabia of the poets—is properly bounded,—on the east, by the Turkish province of Hasa; on the south by the border of the desert near Yemama; on the west by Hejaz in its widest extent to Khaibar; and on the north by Jebel Shammar. Thus defined it includes the regions of El-Kasim, El-Woshem, El-Aared, and Yemama. The “Zephyrs of Nejd” are the pregnant theme of many an Arab poet and in these highlands, the air is crisp and dry and invigorating, especially to the visitors from the hot and moist coast provinces. It was such a poet who wrote in raptures of the Nejd climate: “Then said I to my companion while the camels were hastening To bear us down the pass between Menifah and Demar. ‘Enjoy while thou canst the sweets of the meadows of Nejd; With no such meadows and sweets shalt thou meet after this evening.’ Ah! heaven’s blessing on the scented gales of Nejd, And its greensward and groves glittering from the spring showers; And thy dear friends when thy lot was cast in Nejd— Months flew past, they passed and we knew not, Nor when their moons were new nor when they waned.”