=Wadi Kharit=, one of the greatest trunk wadis of Egypt, has its principal head at Gebel Ras el Kharit, on the main watershed in latitude 14° 10′ and longitude 35°. Pursuing a course the prevailing direction of which is a little north of west, and collecting the drainage from numerous great wadis on its way, it debouches on the Kom Ombo plain and reaches the Nile at the same point as another great wadi, Shait, in latitude 24° 35′. The length of the main channel is over 260 kilometres, and of its tributaries probably more than twenty times as great. It drains an area of more than 23,000 square kilometres. Its average fall is about two metres per kilometre, but in its lower reaches its gradient is less than half this amount. The principal tributaries of Wadi Kharit, which will be separately described, are the Wadis Natash, Antar, Khashab, Abu Hamamid, Elemikan, and Garara (this last with Wadis Timsah and Ghadrib as great feeders). I now propose to trace out the course of the main wadi in some detail, leaving its greater tributaries for separate description, but including its minor feeders. The main head of Wadi Kharit is on the Nile-Red Sea divide, between Gebel Ras el Kharit and Gebel Mikbi, at an altitude of considerably more than 600 metres above the sea. The wadi at first courses a little south of west, over a gently falling sandy plain with hills of bouldery granite, and curves round the south spurs of Gebel el Anbat.[85] Here it receives two tributaries, one from the north-west called Wadi Hilgit, and one from the south-east called Wadi Egat.[86] =Wadi Hilgit= originates on the main watershed in longitude 34° 52′, near Gebel Um Usher. A very steep and difficult pass over the watershed separates its head from that of another Wadi Hilgit draining northward to Wadi Huluz. The two wadis are called Wadi Hilgit lil Kharit and Wadi Hilgit lil Huluz respectively when it is necessary to distinguish them. On its course southward to Kharit, Wadi Hilgit receives as tributaries =Wadi Um Hasidok= and =Wadi Um el Tiur=, draining the mountains of the same names. =Wadi Egat= drains part of the west slopes of Gebel Abu Gurdi and the south part of Gebel Egat, for the first half of its course being shut in by high hills and for the latter half passing over a gently falling plain.