I had been led to expect at the "Well," a pastoral scene, wild flowers, flocks and flowing waters; so I looked with a jaundiced eye upon a deep hole full of slightly brackish water dug in a tamped hollow-a kind of punch-bowl with granite walls, upon whose grim surface a few thorns of exceeding hardihood braved the sun for a season. Not a house was in sight-it was as barren and desolate a spot as the sun ever "viewed in his wide career." But this is what the Arabian traveller must expect. He is to traverse, for instance, the Wady Al-Ward-the Vale of Flowers. He indulges in sweet recollections of Indian lakes beautiful with the Lotus, and Persian plains upon which Narcissus is the meanest of grasses. He sees a plain like swish-work, where knobs of granite act daisies; and where, at every fifty yards, some hapless bud or blossom is dying of inanition among the stones. The sun scorched our feet as we planted the tent, and, after drinking our breakfast, we passed the usual day of perspiration and semi-lethargy. In discomfort man naturally [p.252] hails a change, even though it be one from bad to worse. When our enemy began slanting towards the West, we felt ready enough to proceed on our journey. The camels were laden shortly after 3 P.M., July 20th, and we started, with water jars in our hands, through a storm of Samun. We travelled five hours in a North-Easterly course up a diagonal valley,[FN#18] through a country fantastic in its desolation-a mass of huge hills, barren plains, and desert vales. Even the sturdy Acacias here failed, and in some places the camel grass could not find earth enough for its root. The road wound among mountains, rocks and hills of granite, and over broken ground, flanked by huge blocks and boulders piled up as if man's art had aided Nature to disfigure herself. Vast clefts seamed like scars the hideous face of earth; here they widened into dark caves, there they were choked with glistening drift sand. Not a bird or a beast was to be seen or heard; their presence would have argued the vicinity of water; and, though my companions opined that Badawin were lurking among the rocks, I decided that these Badawin were the creatures of their fears. Above, a sky like polished blue steel, with a tremendous blaze of yellow light, glared upon us without the thinnest veil of mist cloud. Below, the brass-coloured circle scorched the face and dazzled the eyes, mocking them the while with offers of water that was but air. The distant prospect was more attractive than the near view, because it borrowed a bright azure tinge from the intervening atmosphere; but the jagged peaks and the perpendicular streaks of shadow down the flanks of the mountainous background [p.253] showed that yet in store for us was no change for the better.