The valley, winding through the red and green hills, was dull and warm till the cool morning easter, which usually set about eight a.m., began to blow. The effect of increasing altitude showed itself in the vegetation. We now saw for the first time the Kidád (Astragalus), with horrid thorns and a flower resembling from afar the gooseberry: it is common on the Hismá and in the South Country. The Kahlá (Echium), a bugloss, a borage-like plant, with viscous leaves and flowers of two colours,--the young light-pink and the old dark-blue,--everywhere beautified the sands, and reminded me of the Istrian hills, where it is plentiful as in the Nile Valley. The Jarad-thorn was not in bloom; and the same was the case with the hyacinth (Dipcadi erythraeum), so abundant in the Hisma', which some of us mistook for a "wild onion." The Zayti (Lavandula) had just donned its pretty azure bloom. There were Reseda, wild indigo, Tribulus (terrestris), the blue Aristida, the pale Stipa, and the Bromus grass, red and yellow. The Ratam (spartium), with delicate white and pink blossoms, was a reminiscence of Tenerife and its glorious crater; whilst a little higher up, the amene Cytisus, flowering with gold, carried our thoughts back to the far past. Presently the great Fiumara opened upon a large basin denoting the Ras ("head") Wady Sadr: native travellers consider this their second stage from El-Muwaylah. In front the Jibál Sadr extended far to the right and left, a slight depression showing the Khuraytah, or "Pass," which we were to ascend on the morrow. Buttressing the left bank of the broad watercourse was the dwarf hill of which we had been told so many tales. By day its red sands gleam and glisten like burnished copper; during the night fire flashes from the summit: in truth, its sole peculiarity is that of being yellow amongst the gloomy heights around it; whilst the Wady el-Safrá, higher up to the left, discharges from its Jebel a torrent of quartz and syenite, gravel and sand. Abú Khartám, the author of the romance, was among the party: he only smiled when complimented upon the power of his imagination.