We left our resting-place at ten o’clock P.M., and proceeded over the plain of Kara, in a direction N. 40 W. At the end of three hours we passed a ruined building called Sebyl el Kara, where a well, now filled up, formerly supplied the passengers with water. I saw no hills to the west, as far as my eyes could reach. The plain is here overgrown with some trees and thick shrubs. We continued to cross it till six hours, where it closes; and the road begins to ascend slightly through a broad woody valley: here is situated Bir Asfán, a large, deep well, lined with stone, with a spring of good water in the bottom. This is a station of the Hadj. There is another way from Wady Fatme to Asfan, four miles to the eastward of our route. We passed the well without stopping. Samhoudy, the historian of Medina, mentions a village at Asfan, with a spring called Owla; there is now no village here. At seven hours begins a very narrow ascending passage between rocks, affording room for only one camel. The torrents which rush down through this passage in winter have entirely destroyed the road, and filled it with large, sharp blocks of stone; the Hadj route seemed, in several places, to be cut out of the rock, but the night was too dark for seeing any thing distinctly. At the end of eight hours we reached the top of this defile, where a small building stands, perhaps the tomb of a Sheikh. From hence we rode over a wide plain, sometimes sandy, and in other parts a mixture of sand and clay, where trees and shrubs grow. At fourteen hours, near the break of dawn, we passed a small Bedouin encampment, and alighted, at the end of fifteen hours, in the neighbourhood of a village called Kholeys. We had made several short halts during the night, and kindled fires to warm ourselves. Kholeys stands upon a wide plain, in several parts of which date-groves are seen, with fields, where dhourra, bemye, and dokken are cultivated. Several hamlets appear scattered about, which are comprised in the general name of Kholeys; the largest is called Es-Souk, or the market- place, near which the Hadj encamps. A small rivulet, tepid, like that in Wady Fatme, rises near the Souk, and is collected