Had "Wali Háji," as Wallin was called by the Bedawin, looked only ten feet beyond the north-eastern tower of the fort, near the ruins of a modern Mastabah ("masonry bench"), he would have found long- forgotten vestiges of ovens and slags containing copper and iron. The same will prove to be the case about the inland defence of El- Wijh; in fact, all these works seem for obvious reasons to have been built upon sites that have been utilized long before their modern day. El-Muwaylah was probably a more important place than it is at present, when the reef-harbour, which now admits native craft only by a gap to the south-west, had not been choked by shoals. The sandy soil wants only water to produce a luxuriant perennial growth, and every garden can have its well. But more life is wanting; a man heaps up a thorn-hedge, or builds a swish-wall of the brick-clay underlying the Wady, and he forgets only to lay out the field within. Local history does not, it is true, extend beyond two hundred years or so, the probable date of Shaykh Abdullah's venerated sepulchre, a truncated parallelogram of cut coralline on the Wady Sughayyir to the north of the settlement. Yet this "little salt" is too remarkable a site to have remained unoccupied. Possibly it is the "<Greek>," the Horse Village (and fort ?), which Ptolemy (vi. II) places in north lat. 26° 40' (true 27° 40'), whilst his "<Greek>" would be the glorious Shárr, correctly consigned to north lat. 27° 20'. This argues an error of nearly sixty miles by the geographer or his copyists. But Chapter XII. will attempt to show that the latitude of <Greek>, the modern Shuwák, is also one degree too low. So on the East African coast Ptolemy places his Aromata Promontorium, which can only be "Guardafui," between north lat. 5° and 7°, whereas it lies in north lat. 11° 41' 4". The Awwal Hawáwít, or first ruins, begin on the right bank of the Surr after one mile and three quarters from camp; and bear north-east (55° mag.) from the minaret of El-Muwaylah Fort. The position is a sandy basin, containing old Bedawi graves, bounded by a low ridge forming a boulder-clad buttress to the Wady, while the circuit of the two may be a mile and a half. A crumbling modern tower, crowning the right bank, and two Mahrákah ("rub-stones") were the principal remains. The situation must have been well chosen in the days when the heights were wooded, and the Wady was a river. We afterwards mapped the body of the place, lying about three miles from the fort, showing the Yubú' bank to north-west (298° mag.); and nearly due west (260° mag.) El-Muwaylah's only house, the Sayyid's. The site is a holm or island in the Wady Surr, which here runs east-west, and splits: the main line is the southern, and a small branch, a mere gully, occupies the northern bed-side.