Presently we fell into and ascended the great Wady 'Afár, which begins in the Hismá, or Red Region, east of the double coast-range. After receiving a network of Secondary valleys that enable it to flow a torrent, as in France, every ten to twelve years, it falls into the Mínat el-'Ayánát, a little port for native craft, which will presently be visited. We left this Wady at a bend, some two hundred metres wide, called the "Broad of the Jujube," from one of the splendid secular trees that characterize North Midian. Near the camping-ground we shall find another veteran Zizyphus, whose three huge stems, springing from a single base, argue a green old age. Here both banks of the Fiumara are lined with courses of rough stone, mostly rounded and rolled boulders, evidently the ruins of the water-conduits which served to feed the rich growth of the lower 'Afa'l. The vegetation of the gorge-mouth developed itself to dates and Daums, tamarisks and salsolaceæ, out of which scuttled a troop of startled gazelles. We turned the right-hand jamb of the "Gate," and found ourselves at the water and camping-ground of Magháir Shu'ayb. The general appearance of the station-basin is novel, characteristic, and not without its charms, especially when the sunset paints the plain with the red, red gold, and washes every barren peak with the tenderest, loveliest rosy pink. Under an intensely clear sapphire-coloured sky rises a distant rim of broken and chocolate-coloured trap-hills, set off by pale hillocks and white flats of gypsum, here and there crystallized by contact with the plutonics. The formation mostly stands up either in stiff cones or in long spines and ridges, whose perpendicular wall-like crests are impossible to climb. The snowy cliffs rest upon shoulders disposed at the "angle of rest," and the prevailing dull drab-yellow of the base is mottled only where accidental fracture or fall exposes the glittering salt-like interior. The gashes in the flank made by wind and rain disclose the core--grey granite or sandstone coloured by manganese. The greater part of the old city was built of this alabaster-like[EN#34] material. When new, it must have been a scene in fairy-land; Time has now degraded it to the appearance and the consistence of crumbling salt. The quoin-shaped hills of the foreground, all uptilted and cliffing to the north, show the curious mauve and red tints of the many-coloured clays called in the Brazil Tauá. Even the palms are peculiar. Their tall, upright crests of lively green fronds, their dead-brown hangings, and their trunks charred black by the careless Bedawi, form a quaint contrast with the genteel, nattily dressed, and cockneyfied brooms of Egypt and the Hejaz. And that grandeur may not be wanting to the view, on the east rise the peak and pinnacles of the Almond Mountain (Jebel el-Lauz), whilst northwards the Jebel el-Za'nah, a huge dome, forms the horizon.