Wadi Aqilhoq, which drains the eastern parts of Gebel Shellal, courses about parallel to Wadi Shellal a few kilometres further south. It contains a well, Bir Frukit, about twenty kilometres up from its mouth, near some dark conspicuous foot hills called Gebel Balatitda. This well yields a constant supply of very good water, and is the place where I sent for my water supplies in commencing my return march to Port Sudan. The position of the well as shown on the map is only approximate, but its direction having been pointed out with the alidade by guides from two plane-table stations, I believe the location is pretty nearly correct.
Wadi Aqwei drains east of north from among the foot-hills east of Gebel Shellal, and enters the sea four kilometres west of Ras Qubet Isa. Where I crossed it two kilometres from its mouth it was a broad shallow wadi with plenty of scrub, dividing round a low but conspicuous gravel bank before reaching the sea.
Kreit-reit-or is a similar wadi to that last mentioned, coursing north-eastward over the plain from among low hills, and entering the sea five kilometres south-east of Ras Qubet Isa. About two kilometres south of Kreit-reit-or, at a distance of three and a half kilometres from the coast, and thirty metres above sea-level, are the bitter wells of Ti Kureitra. These are four wells, sunk about twelve metres deep in the gypseous strata which here underlie the sand and gravel of the coast-plain. The wells are lined with slabs of selenite. The water is so strongly purgative that a number of my Arabs who drank of it were made extremely unwell, and the wells are chiefly used for watering the flocks of sheep which graze in the neighbouring valleys.
From the group of conspicuous though not very high hills called Gebel Hadarba, ten kilometres west of Ras Hadarba (Cape Elba) many drainage channels cross the coast-plain towards the sea in a direction north of east. Some of the drainage lines form the north side of the hills reach the sea east of Ti Kureitra wells; but others lose themselves in a quicksand called Kuatianai, or “the devourer,” which covers a large triangular space of about twenty square kilometres about the cape. At the actual cape, rocks are visible at the coast, and the quicksand, so far as I could judge from a distance, appears to be really a lagoon, filled with the sand washed down from the hills. The Arabs state that camels wandering on this sand get swallowed up; the colour of its surface is distinctly darker than the rest of the plain.
On either side of the 22nd parallel, near the sea are low gravel-covered banks of calcareous grit, seventy metres high in places, and through these pass several broad wadis draining from the low hill country further west. The chief of these wadis, called Wadi Qabatit, enters the sea at a well defined inlet of the coast called Mersa Qabatit. A well, Bir Qabatit, is situated in the bed of another drainage channel a little south of the main wadi, one and a half kilometres south-east of the mersa and 3·85 kilometres south of the 22nd parallel. The ground at the well is only five metres above the sea. The well is a big excavation in the wadi floor, and its water surface is about at sea-level. To me the water tasted decidedly salt, but the Arabs say it does not purge them.
[89]Floyer’s map (Geog. Journal, 1893) gives the name Gemal as continuing further up as far as the pass into Wadi Durunkat; but my guides say this is an error.
[90]This road is said to lead via Ghuel, Um Khariga, and Dabur, to Gebel Hamrat Wogud.
[91]For a brief mention of the ruins of Berenice, see [p. 29.]
[92]Each of the three vowels in Naait is pronounced broad and separately, so that the word has three syllables.