Hail, the present capital of Nejd, may have a population of ten thousand within its walls. It lies east of Jebel Aja, a granite range 6,000 feet high ending abruptly at this point. The city is on a table-land 3,500 feet above the sea. The Amir’s castle is a formidable stronghold occupying a position of immense natural strength in the Jebel Aja. Blunt visited this place in 1878, but does not give its exact site, “lest the information might be utilized by the Turks under possible future contingencies.” We have three pen-pictures of Hail: that of Palgrave who drew a plan of the city; the description of Doughty with his plan of the Amir’s residence and guest-house; and the sketches of Lady Ann Blunt on her pilgrimage. It is a walled town with several gates, a large market-place, the palaces overtopping all and mosques sufficient for the worshippers. It is a clean, well-built town, according to Doughty and pleasant to live in save for the awe of the tyrant-ruler. Its circuit may be nearly an hour, in the centre of the walled enclosure stands the palace; near it the great mosque and directly opposite the principal bazaar. The great coffee-hall where the Amir gives his audiences is eighty feet long with lofty walls and of noble proportions. It has long rows of pillars “upholding the flat roof of ethel timbers and palm-stalk mat-work, goodly stained and varnished with the smoke of the daily hospitality. Under the walls are benches of clay overspread with Bagdad carpets. By the entry stands a mighty copper-tinned basin or ‘sea’ of fresh water with a chained cup, from thence the coffee-server draws and he may drink who thirsts. In the upper end of this princely _kahwa_ (coffee-house) are two fire-pits, like shallow graves, where desert bushes are burned in colder weather; they lack good fuel, and fire is blown commonly under the giant coffee-pots in a clay hearth like a smith’s furnace.” The palace castles are built in Nejd with battled towers of clay-brick and whitened on the outside with _jiss_ or plaster; this in contrast with the palm-gardens in the walled-enclosure give the town a bright, fresh aspect. Outside the walls, the contrast of the Bedouin squalor and the rusty black basalt rocks lying in rough confusion is intense. Hail lies in the midst of a barren country and is an oasis not by nature but by the pluck and perseverance of its founders. The Shammar Arabs settled here from antiquity and the place is mentioned in the ancient poem of Antar.