Sheikh Abd-ur-Rahman described the Gebel Shammar as abounding in fertile valleys, where the Arabs had villages and cultivated lands. The inhabitants are of the same great tribe of Shammar as those who wander over the plains of Mesopotamia. Suttum told me that his family still possessed their gardens in the hills; and although, from long absence, their produce had been gathered by strangers, yet that he could by law at any time return and claim them. Ibn Reshid was described to me as a powerful, and for an Arab, an enlightened chief, who had restored security to the country, and who desired to encourage trade and the passage of caravans through his territories. His mares and horses, collected from the tribes of central Arabia, were declared to excel all those of the Desert in beauty and in blood. Hawking and hunting are his favorite amusements, and game abounds in the hills and plains. Amongst the wild animals are lions, leopards, deer, and a kind of ox or large antelope, I could not learn exactly which, called Wothaiyah, said to have long spiral horns, and to be exceedingly fierce and dangerous. I was assured that in the Gebel Shammar there are ruins of large cities, attributed by the Arabs to the Jews. Inscriptions in an unknown character are also said to exist on slabs of stone and on rocks. They may be that class called Himyari, found in other parts of the Arabian peninsula. About two hours and a half, or eight miles to the north-east of Hillah, a mound, scarcely inferior in size to those of Babylon, rises in the plain. It is called El Hymer, meaning, according to the Arabs, the red, from its color. The ruin has assumed a pyramidal form, but it is evidently the remains of a solid square structure, consisting, like the Birs Nimroud, of a series of terraces or platforms. It may be conjectured, therefore, that it was a sacred edifice built upon the same general plan as all the temples of Babylonia and Assyria. The basement or substructure appears to have been of sun-dried brick; the upper part, and probably the casing of the lower, of bricks burnt in the kiln. Many of the latter are inscribed with the name and titles of Nebuchadnezzar. Although the masonry is solid and firmly bound together, it is not united by a white cement like that of the Mujelibé. The same tenacious mud that was used for making the bricks has been daubed, as far as I could ascertain, between each layer. The ruin is traversed like the Birs by square holes to admit air. Around the centre structure are scattered smaller mounds and heaps of rubbish, covered with the usual fragments of pottery, glass and bricks.