The Land of Midian (Revisited) — Volume 1Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Science
The Land of Midian (Revisited) — Volume 1
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir, 1821-1890; Hejaz (Saudi Arabia) -- Description and travel
Our course thence lay eastward up the easy bed of the Fiumara, an
eastern section of an old friend, the Wady Tiryam; it now takes
the well-known name "Wady Sadr," and we shall follow it to its
head in the Hismá. The scene is rocky enough for Scotland or
Scandinavia, with its huge walls bristling in broken rocks and
blocks, its blue slides, and its polished sheets of dry
watercourse which, from afar, flash in the sun like living
cataracts. On the northern or right bank rises the mighty Harb,
whose dome, single when seen from the west, here becomes a
Tridactylon, splitting into three several heads. Facing it, the
northernmost end of the Dibbagh range forms a truncated tower,
conspicuous far out at sea: having no name, it was called by us
Burj Jebel Dibbagh. A little further to the east it will prove to
be the monstrous pommel of a dwarf saddleback, everywhere a
favourite shape with the granite outcrop.
MM. Clarke and Lacaze, who had never before seen anything higher
that the hillocks of the Isle of Wight or the Buttes de
Montmartre were hot upon ascending the almost perpendicular sides
of the Burj, relying upon the parallel and horizontal fissures in
the face, which were at least ten to twenty feet apart. These
dark marks, probably stained by oxide of iron, reminded me of
those which wrinkle the granitic peaks about Rio de Janeiro, and
which have been mistaken for "hieroglyphs."
The valley-sole is parti-coloured; the sands of the deeper line
to the right are tinctured a pale and sickly green by the
degradation of the porphyritic traps, here towering in the
largest masses yet seen; while the gravel of the left bank is
warm, and lively with red grit and syenitic granite. Looking down
the long and gently waving line, we feel still connected with the
civilized world by the blue and purple screen of Sinai forming
the splendid back-ground. Everything around us appears deserted;
the Ma'ázah are up country, and the Beni Ukbah have temporarily
quitted these grazing-grounds for the Surr of El-Muwaylah. We
camped for the night, after a total march of eleven miles, at the
Sayl el-Nagwah, a short Nullah at the foot of a granite block
similarly named; and a gap supplied us with tolerable rain-water.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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