On the next day another reconnaissance was made. I had been shown fine specimens of quartz from the Eastern highlands; moreover, a bottle of "bitter" or sulphur-water from the Wady Mab'úg, the "oblique" or "crooked" valley, mentioned in "The Gold-Mines of Midian,"[EN#107] had been brought to us with much ceremony. Those who tasted it, indeed, were divided as to whether it smacked more of brimstone or of ammonia. Accordingly, Mr. Clarke and Lieutenant Yusuf walked up the Wady Makná, and ascended the Mab'úg, where the mineral spring proved to be a shallow pool of rain-water, much frequented by animals, camels included. Search for the "Marú" was more successful: they found a network of veins in the sandstone grits (?) of the Jebel Umm Lasaf; and they thus established the fact that the "white stone" abounds to the east as well as to the south of Makná. Meanwhile we were working hard at the Jebel el-Fahísát, the great discovery of the northern journey. I had been struck by the name of the watercourse to the north of the hauteville, Wady Majrá Sayl Jebel el-Marú--"the Nullah of the Divide of the Torrent (that pours) from the Mountain of Quartz." Moreover, a Makna'wi lad, 'Id bin Mohsin, had brought in fine specimens of the Negro or iridescent variety, offering to show the place. Lastly, other Bedawi had contributed fine specimens of Marú, with the grey copper standing out of it in veins. On the evening of January 27th we walked up the picturesque mouth of the Makná valley. After passing the conglomerate "Gate," and the dwarf plantations on both sides above it, we reached in forty-five minutes the spot where the lower water, 'Ayn el-Fara'í, tumbles over rocks of grit and granite. On the left bank, denoted by a luxuriant growth of rushes, is an influent called Sha'b el-Kázi, or "the Judge's Pass."[EN#108] Ascending it for a few paces, we struck up the broad and open Fiumara, which I shall call for shortness "Wady Majrá." The main trunk of many branches, it is a smooth incline, perfectly practicable to camels; with banks and buttresses of green-yellow chloritic sands, and longitudinal spines outcropping from the under surface. It carries off the surplus water from the north-western slopes of that strange wavelike formation, the Jebel el-Fahísát, which bounds the right (southern) bank of the Wady Makná. Presently we sighted the Jebel el-Maru', the strangest spectacle. The apex of the gloomy porphyritic trap is a long spine of the tenderest azure-white, filmy as the finials of Milan Cathedral, and apparently melting into thin air. Its crest seems abnormally tall and distant; and below it a huge grey vein, horizontal and wavy, cuts and pierces the peaklet of red rock; and is cut and pierced, in its turn, by two perpendicular dykes of porphyritic trap, one flanking the right and the left shoulders of the low cone. When standing upon the hauteville during my first visit, I had remarked this "white Lady" of a