"A far-awa' bruch's a near-awa' blast." The blast was nearer than we expected; and, during the rest of the journey, the "bruch" rarely if ever deceived us. Yet the night was not much disturbed by the furious northerly gusts, showing that the storm which we had escaped was raging in the still-vexed 'Akabah. Next morning we landed to the south-west of Tírán's easternmost peak, with a view of prospecting and adding to our collections. On the shore, about three hundred feet from the sea, is a bank of dead shells which are not found on the northern or sandy end of the island: near the water most of them are tenanted by paguri ("hermits"). We caught a number of crabs and small fish, and we carried off a single rock-oyster: as yet we had not found out that the Ustrída--the vulgar form of the Hellenic and classical "Istiridiyá"--abounds in these seas. After thirty minutes' walk up the southern plane of the prism, composed of gypseous and coralline rocks, veins of white petrosilex resembling broken columels, streaks of magnetic black sand, and scatters of grit and harder stones, we reached the summit of the little ridge. It afforded a fine bird's-eye view of the splendid middle port; of the false harbour; of the real shoal to its south-east, and of the basin which seems to form Sináfir Island. We now bent to the south-west. Here the surface is much cut and broken by sandy Wadys, dotted with a few straggling plants: to our right was a Goz or inclined arenaceous bank, where the south wind had sifted the sand from the gravel, disposing the former in the hollows, and the latter on the crest of the ripples. Presently we reached a strange formation which, seen from the east, appears a huge vein, red and rusty, beginning close to the sea, and crossing the body of the island from south to north, while a black cone is so disposed that its southern front simulates a crater. A narrow gorge opens upon a semicircular hollow lined with ochraceous or ferruginous matter; in fact, part of the filon, which sends off fibrils in all directions. The confusion of formations was startling. The floor was here of white petrosilex, there of grey granite, variegated with squares and lozenges, drops and pineapples, red, green, neutral tinted, and disposed by oxides of iron and copper in natural designs that looked artificial. Scattered over the bed of the upper ravine beyond the hollow, were carbonates of lime, ruddy brown and chocolate-hued, here a pudding-stone, there porous like basalt: the calcareous sulphates were both amorphous and crystalline, the latter affected by contact with plutonic matter. The walls of the gash showed a medley of clay breccias, disposed in every imaginable way; and divided by horizontal veins of heat-altered quartz. A few paces further led to the head of the ravine, where a tumble of huge rocks, choking the bed, showed that the rain-torrents must at times be violent.