The wind blew great guns outside the bay, and the inside proved anything but calm. As the water was fifty-eight fathoms deep near the coast, our captain found no moorings for his ship, except to the dangerous reef; and we kept drifting about in a way which would have distracted sensitive nerves. I had been told of ruins and tumuli at El-Hakl, which denote, according to most authorities, the Mesogeian town <Greek>(Ancale): Ptolemy (vi. 7, 27) places this oppidum Mediterraneum between Mákna or Maína (Madyan), and Madiáma (Magháir Shu'ayb), the old capital. Unwilling, however, to risk the safety of the gunboat, where nothing was to be expected beyond what we had seen at El-'Akabah, I resolved, after waiting half an hour, not to land. The Sambúk received a cargo of quarrymen and sacks, in order to ship at Makná the "argentiferous galena" and other rocks left by Lieutenant Yusuf and M. Philipin upon the shore; and, that done, she was directed to rejoin us at Tírán Island. As long as the norther coursed high, she beat us hollow; in the afternoon, however, when the gale, as usual, abated, she fell off, perhaps purposely, not wishing to pass a night in the open. By sunset her white sail had clean disappeared, having slipped into some snug cove. The Arabian shore is here of simpler construction than that of Sinai; consequently the chart has had a better chance. The Mukhbir resumed her way southwards in glorious weather, a fresh breath blowing from the north; and fleecy clouds variegating the sky, which was almost as blue as the waves After six miles and a half from El-Hakl and nearly twenty from El-Akabah, she ran to the west of El-Humayzah Island, the "Omasír" of Wellsted (ii. 149), between which and the mainland is a well sheltered berth. It is a great contrast with the "Hill of the Fort," the Pharaohnic rock, this lump some eighty feet high, built of Secondary gypsum and yellow serpentine like the coast behind it. Gleaming deadly white, pale as a corpse in the gorgeous sunshine, and utterly bare, except for a single shrub, it is based upon a broad, dark-coloured barrier-reef. Local tradition here places the Kasr el-Bedawíyyah, "Palace of the Bedawi Woman (or Girl)," but we saw neither sign of building nor trace of population in the second island which the Gulf el-'Akabah owns.