said to be large stone-quarries, and about thirty years previously an iron instrument had been found; the instrument was still in Hassan Effendi’s possession, and some wonderful stories had grown up as to the manner of its use.[29] Ascherson himself believed this information of Hassan Effendi’s to be substantially correct, but he thought the “pillars” might be merely pinnacle-shaped natural rocks. I am likewise inclined to believe it trustworthy, but I think the “wells” may have been merely water- dumps—that is, collections of jars of water. My reason for this view is twofold. In the first place, the ground-levels in that part of the desert are so far above the static water-level, that if wells were bored they would have to be very deep, and the water would not rise anywhere near the surface (there can, of course, be here no question of local rainfall as a source for the water in the “wells”); and in the second place, it seems very probable that the accumulation of large broken earthenware jars which I discovered in 1916 at the place I named “Pottery Hill” (latitude 24° 26′ 27″, longitude 27° 38′ 54″) is one of the dumps in question.[30] The importance of the above interpretation of Hassan Effendi’s story, if accepted, as I think it must be, lies in the proof which it furnishes that there cannot possibly be an undiscovered oasis anywhere near a point seven or eight days from Dakhla in the direction of Kufra. A consideration of the static water-levels and the contours of the ground would lead us to this conclusion if the views I have advanced on the underground-water question are correct; but the fact that the raiders would never have made such a large water-dump if water could have been readily got from a well in the vicinity makes the conclusion almost certain independently of my hypothesis, and thus incidentally tends to support the latter. Is it possible that “Zerzura,” which I am told signifies in Arabic a starling (but is commonly applied to any small bird), is here a corruption of some other name derived from “zeer,” a water-jar, and that instead of “the _oasis_ of the blacks,” Zerzura was really “the _water-depôt_ of the blacks”? Schweinfurth has recorded[31] a story which was told him in Kharga Oasis, that in 1872 some Arabs of a Darfur caravan, who had missed the road, found a small oasis about 1½ days’ journey to the west of Beris. The oasis was said to contain pools full of wild geese, date-palms, and a temple. People who went out of Beris to find the place returned unsuccessful. I am, however, rather inclined to think that the story has some basis of fact, because in 1898 I myself found springs and traces of ancient conduits in the dunes north-west of Beris, and there may be other water-sources beyond the point which I reached.[32] A writer in the ninth edition of Murray’s ‘Guide to Egypt,’ published in 1896, gives the following different statements of Arabs as to the position of Zerzura: