The rest of our time at Makná was given to the study of this discovery. The great quartz-wall or vein runs nearly due north and south, with a dip of 5 degrees west; it has pierced the syenite, forming a sheet down one peak, spanning a second, and finally appearing in an apparently isolated knob, that bore from the apex 215 degrees (mag.) The upper part, like that of the Jebel el-Abyaz, is apparently sterile: at a lower horizon it becomes panaché; and at last almost all is iridescent--in fact, it is the Filon Husayn, still richer in veins and geodes. The filets and fibrils of dust are exposed to sight in the flanks, and near the base of the great quartz-vein: we should never have been able to remove the barren upper capping. Every day's work brought with it some novelty. The Jebel el-Mará, the centre or focus of the formation, was found to push out veins to the north, extending within a few yards of the Wady Makná's mouth. Here, however, the quartz imbedded in grey granite appears cupriferous, producing fine grey copper (?); and the same is the case to the east of the Fahísát block. Other green-tinged veins were found bearing 205 degrees (mag.) from our camp. There is also a quartz-hill whose valley-drain, about a mile and a third long, leads down to the sea, about two minutes' walk south of the southern clump of "tabernacles" occupied by the Maknáwis. The dust is richest, as usual, at the walls where the vein is in immediate contact with the heat-altered granites, whose red variety, containing very little mica, becomes quasi-syenitic. Certain of the Expedition thought that the Fahísát showed signs of having been worked by the ancients: my eyes could see nothing of the kind. And here, as in other parts of our strange country, there is a medley, a confusion of different formations. On February 2nd, the day before we left Makná, the Arabs brought in heavy masses of purple-black, metalliferous rock, scattered over the gorges and valleys south of the Jebel el-Fahísát; while others declared that they could point out a vein in situ. Our engineer declared it to be argentiferous galena, but it proved to be magnetic iron. His assays were of the rudest: he broke at least one crucible per day, lamenting the while that he had been supplied with English articles, instead of creusets de Bourgogne. And no wonder! He treated them by a strong blast in a furious coal-fire without previous warming. His muffle was a wreck, and such by degrees became the condition of all his apparatus. However, as we sought, so we found: hardly a Bedawi lad in camp but unpouched some form of metallic specimens. The Shaykhs declared that the wealth of "Kárún" must have been dug here; and I vainly told them that the place of punishment of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram is still shown by Christians in the Convent of Mount Sinai.[EN#112]