During the day they travelled over sandy and stony ridges, and late in the afternoon entered the Wady Meifah, where they found wells of good water and scanty vegetation. “The country now began to assume a far different aspect. Numerous hamlets, interspersed amid extensive date groves, verdant fields of grain, and herds of sleek cattle, showed themselves in every direction, and we now fell in with parties of inhabitants for the first time since leaving the sea-shore. Astonishment was depicted on their countenances, but as we did not halt they had no opportunity of gratifying their curiosity by gazing at us for any length of time.” One of the Bedouins, however, in spite of Wellsted’s remonstrances, told the people that the travellers were in search of buried treasure. When the latter attempted to encamp near a village, the inhabitants requested them to remove; the guides proved to be ignorant of the road in the night, and they would have been suffered to wander about without shelter but for the kindness of an old woman, who conducted them to her house. This proved to be a kind of khan for travellers, and was already so crowded that the travellers were obliged to sleep in an open courtyard. They were hardly prepared for the scene which daylight disclosed to them. “The dark verdure of fields of millet, sorghum, tobacco, etc., extended as far as the eye could reach. Mingled with these we had the soft acacia and the stately but more sombre foliage of the date palm; while the creaking of numerous wheels with which the grounds were irrigated, and in the distance several rude ploughs drawn by oxen, the ruddy and lively appearance of the people, who now flocked toward us from all quarters, and the delightful and refreshing coolness of the morning air, combined to form a scene which he who gazes on the barren aspect of the coast could never anticipate.” After three hours’ travel through this bright and populous region, they came in sight of the ruins, which the inhabitants call _Nakab el-Hadjar_ (meaning “The Excavation from the Rock”). According to Wellsted’s estimate, they are about fifty miles from the coast.