The predominant types of scenery are extensive sandy plains and gaunt rugged mountains. In the low-lands, pleasant relief from the stony monotony is afforded by the trees and scrub which occur along most of the wadis, though their struggle for existence is often evidenced by miles of withered and blackened scrub in places which a few years ago were green and flourishing. The bareness of the mountains becomes slightly relieved in the Elba district, where beautiful trees and flowering plants thrive high up the mountain-side along all the drainage lines. As to the forms of the mountains, one sees extensive broken sandstone plateaux at Gebel Abraq (_El_), remarkable rounded granite bosses at Gebels Muelih (_Ab_), Nugrus (_Dc_), Selaia (_Fh_), and Um Rasein (_Jr_), jagged and spiky granite peaks in the mountains of Faraid (_Jk_), Qash Amir (_Os_), and Elba (_Ps_), and broken masses of gneiss, dark schists and serpentines at Gebels Hafafit (_Dc_), Hangalia (_Dc_), Abu Hamamid (_Ef_), Hamata (_Gf_), and Gerf (_Hp_). Perhaps the most remarkable of all the peaks are those of Faraid (_Jk_), which from the north look like the expanded fingers of a huge hand, whence they received their name of _Mons Pentadactylus_ in antiquity, while one specially sharp peak is styled very appropriately “the Bodkin” on Admiralty Charts. The mass of Elba forms a very fine view from the north, but the prevalence of clouds about its summits frequently hides it from view for months together. The views from the mountain-tops are extensive and beautiful, especially at sunrise and sunset, when the peaks take on wonderful colours, and the views from the summits when the entire lower landscape is bathed in clouds, through which only the higher peaks project like islands from a great sea, are not less remarkable. Though a good look out was kept from the highest mountains across the sea, the mountains of the opposite shore of Arabia were never with certainty made out; the cone of Zeberged Island was, however, often seen. It is stated by d’Anville, on the authority of Castro,[41] that both the Arabian and African mountains can be seen from the summit of Zeberged. =Animal and Plant Life.=