Walking round the eastern bay, where the ubiquitous black sand striped the yellow shore, we observed that the tide here rises only one foot,[EN#134] whereas at Suez it may reach a metre and a half to seven feet. According to the chart, the springs attain four feet at "Omeider" (El-Humayzah), some nineteen direct knots to the south; and in the Sharm Yáhárr we found them about one metre. Presently we entered, by wooden doors with locks and keys, the carefully kept palm-groves, walled with pisé and dry stone. Wells were being sunk; and a depth of nine to ten feet gave tolerably sweet water. Striking the broad northern trail which leads to the Wady Yitm and to the upper El-'Arabah, still a favourite camping-ground of the tribes,[EN#135] we reached the modern settlement, which has something of the aspect of a townlet, not composed, like El-Muwaylah, of a single house. The women fled at our approach, as we threaded the alleys formed by the mud tenements. The fort[EN#136] is usually supposed to have been built by Sulta'n Selim I., in A.D. 1517, or three years before his death, after he had subdued the military aristocracy of the Mamlúks, who had ruled Egypt for three centuries. Much smaller than that of El-Muwaylah, it is the normal affair: an enceinte once striped red and white; curtains flanked by four Burj, all circular, except the new polygon to the north-west; and a huge, gloomy main-gateway fronting north, and flanked by two bastions. On the proper right side is a circle of stone bearing, without date, the name of "Sultán Selim Khan el-Fátih," who first laid out the pilgrim-route along the Red Sea shore. Inside the dark cool porch a large inscription bears the name "El-Ashraf Kansúr (sic)[EN#137] El-Ghori," the last but one of the Circassian Mamlúk kings of Egypt, who was defeated and slain by the Turkish conqueror near Aleppo in A.D. 1501. Above it stand two stone shields dated A.H. 992 (= A.D. 1583--1584). In the southern wall of the courtyard is the mosque, fronted by a large deep well dug, they say, during the building of the fort: it still supplies the whole Hajj-caravan with warmish sweet water. On the ground lies a good brass gun with Arabic inscription and numerals; and the towers, commanding the little kitchen-gardens outside the fort-wall, are armed with old iron carronades. The garrison, consisting of half a dozen gunners and a few Ba'sh-Buzuks, looks pale, bloodless, and unwholesome: the heats of summer are almost unsupportable; and 'Akabah has the name of a "little hell." Moreover, they eat, drink, smoke, sleep, chat, quarrel, and never take exercise: the officers complained sadly that I had made them walk perhaps a mile round the bay-head. And yet they have, within two days of sharp ride, that finest of sanitaria, the Hismá, which extends as far north and south as they please to go.