The Expedition was thus divided into four, three working parties and one of idlers. Anton and Petros were left behind to do nothing as magazine-men. Lieutenant Darwaysh (the linesman) who was too weak to ride, and Sub-Lieutenant Mohammed (the miner) who was too old to travel, had charge of the sick; both found the far niente equally sweet. On February 17th I again bade adieu to the gunboat Mukhbir, and marched with the largest party upon our camp at El-Muwaylah, distant about six miles (=one hour and forty-five minutes). The path from Sharm Yáhárr crosses the hard sands of the maritime plain, metalled with the natural macadam of the Desert. The stone is mostly dark silex, the "hen's liver" of the Brazil, and its surface is kept finely polished, and free from "patina," by the friction of the dust-laden winds. The line is deeply gashed by short, broad gullies: the Hajj-road, running further east, heads these ugly Nullahs. The third and largest channel is Wady Surr, the great valley of El-Muwaylah, which may be regarded as the southern frontier of "Madyan" (Proper): we shall trace it to its head in the Hismá. I had left the camp-pitching at El-Muwaylah to the Egyptian officers, who naturally chose the site nearest the two northern wells; a wave of ground hot by day, cold at night, windy and dusty at all times; moreover, the water was near enough to be horribly fouled. No wonder that in such a place many of the men fell ill, and that one subsequently died--our only loss during the four months' march. On February 18th we proceeded, under the misguidance of a Básh-Buzúk of the fort, Ahmed Sálih el-Mal'ún, to inspect a neighbouring ruin called Abá Hawáwít--"the Father of (Dwelling-) Walls." Wallin (p. 30) declares that, "finding no mention made of Muweilih in Arab manuscripts, nor traces or traditions among the existing generation in the land, pointing to a high antiquity," he is inclined to consider it a town of modern origin, in fact the growth of the Egyptian pilgrimage. His error is excusable. He was a passing traveller; and I well remember that for a whole year the true name of a hill immediately behind our house at Damascus remained unknown to me: we had called it after our own fashion, and the term had at once been adopted by all our over-polite native friends. Indeed, this is one of the serious difficulties to be encountered, throughout the East, by the scrupulous traveller whose greatest fear is that of misleading others. The Expedition had paid four several visits to El-Muwaylah, and had never heard a word about ruins, when I happened to read out before the Shaykhs assembled at Magháir Shu'ayb a passage from El-Makrízi treating of the destroyed cities of Madyan. They at once mentioned half a dozen names lying within short distances of the "little salt." Amongst them was Abú Hawáwít, literally meaning "tenement walls," but here applied, in the short form Hawáwít, to ruins in general.