“We journeyed on till dark, and then reached certain hillocks of a different character from the hard ground lately under our feet. Here began the Nefood, whose course from the southwest to northeast, and then north, parts between Kaseem, Woshem, and Sedeyr. I have already said something of these sandy inlets when describing that which we crossed three months ago between Djowf and Shomer. “On the verge of the desert strip we now halted a little to eat a hasty supper, and to drink—the Arabs coffee and the Persians tea. But journeying in these sands, under the heat of the day, is alike killing to man and beast, and therefore Aboo-’Eysa had resolved that we should cross the greater portion under favor of the cooler hours of night. “All night, a weary night, we waded up and down through waves of sand, in which the camels often sank up to their knees, and their riders were obliged to alight and help them on. “Now by full daylight appeared the true character of the region which we were traversing; its aspect resembled the Nefood north of Djebel Shomer, but the undulations were here higher and deeper, and the sand itself lighter and less stable. In most spots neither shrub nor blade of grass could fix its root, in others a scanty vegetation struggled through, but no trace of man anywhere. The camels ploughed slowly on; the Persians, unaccustomed to such scenes, were downcast and silent; all were tired, and no wonder. At last, a little before noon, and just as the sun’s heat was becoming intolerable, we reached the verge of an immense crater-like hollow, certainly three or four miles in circumference, where the sand-billows receded on every side, and left in the midst a pit seven or eight hundred feet in depth, at whose base we could discern a white gleam of limestone rock, and a small group of houses, trees, and gardens, thus capriciously isolated in the very heart of the desert. “This was the little village and oasis of Wasit, or ‘the intermediary,’ so called because a central point between the three provinces of Kaseem, Sedeyr, and Woshem, yet belonging to none of them. Nor is it often visited by wayfarers, as we learned from the inhabitants, men simple and half-savage, from their little intercourse with the outer world, and unacquainted even with the common forms of Islamitic prayer, though dwelling in the midst of the Wahabee dominions. “A long, winding descent brought us to the bottom of the valley, where on our arrival men and boys came out to stare at the Persians, and by exacting double prices for fruit and camel’s milk proved themselves not altogether such fools as they looked. For us, regarded as Arabs, we enjoyed their hospitality—it was necessarily a limited one—gratis; whereupon the Na’ib grew jealous, and declaimed against the Arabs as ‘infidels,’ for not treating with suitable generosity pilgrims like themselves returning from the ‘house of God.’