The western Shigd, indeed, is sufficiently peculiar. It is the southern apex of a short range, numbering some four heads: the eastern flank discharges the Wady Kizáz, which feeds the 'Afál; and the western the Wady Makná. The summit of the broken and spiny cone is a huge perpendicular block, apparently inaccessible as a tower, and composed of the dull yellow ferruginous conglomerate called "El-Safrá:" the tint contrasts strongly with a long line of bright white Rugham (gypsum), bisecting the head of the Wady Makná. Below the apex is a thick stratum of manganese-stained rock: the upper line, with a dip of 15 deg. towards the main valley, looks much like a row of bulwarks which had slipped from the horizontal, while still bluff between the north-east and east. Indeed, the shape is so regular that M. Lacaze, at first sight, asked if it was une construction. As soon as the washing-trough was brought up from Sharmá, we opened operations by digging a trench, at least twelve feet deep, in the re-entering angle of the bed close to the Mimosa tree. The sand, pink above and chloritic yellow below, ended in a thick bed of water-rolled pebbles, not in ground-rock; nor did it show the couch of excellent clay which usually underlies the surface, and which, I have said, is extracted through pits to make sun-dried brick, swish, and other building materials. We also secured some of the blood-red earth from the eastern tail of the northern "Shigh," the manganese-stained Tauá and the gravelly sand washed out of the Cascalho-gravel, the latter very promising. The result of our careless working, however, was not successful; the normal ilmenite, black sand of magnetic iron, took the place of gold-dust. And this unlooked-for end again made us suspicious of my old friend's proceedings: the first occasion was that of his notable "malingering." Had he bought a pinch of "Tibr" (pure gold) from the Bedawin, and mixed it with the handful of surface stuff ? Had the assayer at Alexandria played him a trick ? Or had an exceptionally heavy torrent really washed down auriferous "tailings"? I willingly believe the latter to have been the case; and we shall presently see it is within the range of possibility. Traces of gold were found by Lieutenant-Colonel W. A. Ross, through his pyrological process, in the sandy clays brought from the mouth of Wady Makná.