That day we had a very tiresome adventure. Starting off early before our caravan with several Jabberi, we intended to ascend to the plateau before the heat of midday came on. We were accompanied by a few soldiers, who it turned out did not know the way, and having ridden for an hour and a half up a narrow gorge with wild figs, wild date, and fan palms growing around us, and really magnificent cliffs 700 to 800 feet high on either side of us, reddish in colour and with fossils in the limestone strata, a truly fearful and awe-inspiring place, we suddenly came to an abrupt termination of our valley, having wormed ourselves along, chiefly on foot, and found that unless Sindbad's roc came to our assistance we could not possibly get out of it. Consequently we were regretfully obliged retrace our steps, having spent three hours and much toil, but glad of having had an opportunity of following one of these valleys to its bitter end. It appeared that our supposed guides had never been there in their lives. We scrambled down this wadi, and into the wadi to our right; the way truly was difficult, the valley narrowing and nearly blocked up by perfectly perpendicular cliffs. Our caravan and servants were anxiously awaiting us at a curious spot called Mikadeh, about a quarter of the way up the cliff, where the road which we had missed goes through a natural tunnel about twenty yards long, from lovely pools of rain-water preserved in its recesses, with which we eagerly refreshed ourselves. The rest of the ascent to the plateau was marvellously steep. The camels had to be unloaded, and two fell down. All the baggage was carried by men, up crag after crag, and sometimes there was no sign of a path. I never could have imagined it possible for camels to ascend the roof-like slope of rock up which they had to clamber for the last 50 yards, and indeed, one poor animal did fall, and injured itself so that it had to be unloaded and taken back, whereupon those Bedouin who did not own it heartlessly regretted that it had not been killed, as they would have liked some of its flesh for supper. Just at the end everything had to be unloaded again, and the camels literally dragged up to the top, while we sat dangling our legs over the cliff. Such yelling and shrieking I never heard among the Bedouin, our soldiers and our servants all calling each other rascals, and no one doing more than he could help; and inasmuch as we had about five Salehs, four Umbarreks, and other duplicated names amongst our men, the shouts of 'So-and-so, son of so-and-so,' made us fully realise the clumsiness of Arab nomenclature. When we clambered up on to the akaba it looked dreary and lifeless, silent and lonely and stony, but it soon became lively enough, for we were a large _kafila_, about fifty people and twenty-four camels. We had by very good fortune a great deal of cloud that day, but also some tremendous sun.