Thence we passed through the dry Báb ("sea gap"), cut by a torrent in the regular line of the coralline cliff, the opening of the Wady Melláh, off which lay our Sambúk. Marching up the Wady Maka'dah, our experienced eyes detected many small outcrops of quartz, formerly unobserved, in the sole and on the banks. The granite hills, here as throughout Midian, were veined and dyked with two different classes of plutonic rock. The red and pink are felsites or fine-grained porphyries; the black and bottle-green are the coarse-grained varieties, easily disintegrating, and forming hollows [Illustration with caption: Fortification on the cliff commanding the right bank of Wady Sharma'.] in the harder granite. The ride was made charming by the frontage of picturesque Jebel 'Urnub, with its perpendicular Pinnacles upon rock-sheets dropping clear a thousand feet; its jutting bluffs; its three huge flying Buttresses, that seemed to support the mighty wall-crest; and its many spits and "organs," some capped with finials that assume the aspect of logan-stones. There was no want of animal life, and the yellow locusts were abroad; one had been seized by a little lizard which showed all the violent muscular action of the crocodile. There were small long-eared hares, suggesting the leporide; sign of gazelles appeared; and the Bedawin spoke of wolves and hyenas, foxes and jackals. We camped upon the old ground to the southwest of the Jebel el-Abyaz; and at the halt our troubles forthwith began. The water, represented to be near, is nowhere nearer than a two hours' march for camels; and it is mostly derived from rain-puddles in the great range of mountains which subtends maritime Midian. But this was our own discovery. The half-Fellah Bedawin, like the shepherds, their predecessors, in the days of Abimelech and Jethro, are ever chary of their treasure; the only object being extra camel-hire. After eating your salt, a rite whose significance, by-the-by, is wholly ignored throughout Midian and its neighbourhood, they will administer under your eyes a silencing nudge to an over-communicative friend. 'The very children that drive the sheep and goats instinctively deny all knowledge of the Themáil ("pits") and holes acting as wells.