Our day's work had been only four slow hours; but we were compelled to await the caravan, which did not arrive till after noon. It had passed round by the Wady Rábigh, into and up the "Father of Glass;" in fact, it had described an easy semicircle; while we had ridden in a series of zigzags, over rough and difficult short cuts. A delay was also necessary for our mappers to connect this march with their itinerary of the central region. Already the Wady Mulaybij had shown us the familiar peak and dorsum of Jebel Raydán; and we had "chaffed" Furayj about his sudden return home. From our camp in the Abá'l-Gezáz, the Zigláb block of Shaghab bore nearly north (350° mag.); and the adjoining Jebel el-Aslah, also a blue cone on the horizon, rose about two degrees further north.
After the big mess-tent had been duly blown down, and the usual discipline had been administered for washing in the drinking-pool; we crossed to the left of the Wady by way of an evening stroll, and at once came upon an atelier of some importance. The guides seemed to ignore its existence, so we christened it Mashghal Alá'l-Gezáz. On the slope of a trap-hill facing the Wady el-Ghami's, the southern valley which we had last crossed, stood a square of masonry scattered round with fragments of pottery, glass, and basalt. Below it, on the "mesopotamian" plain, lay the foundations of houses still showing their cemented floors. The lowlands and highlands around the settlement looked white-patched with mounds, veins, and scatters of quartz. The evening was stillness itself, broken only by the cries of the Katás, which are now nesting, as they flocked to drink; and the night was cool—a promise, and a false promise, that the Khamsín had ended on its usual third day.
The next morning (April 3rd) showed us El-Bada', the whole march lying up the Wady Abá'l-Gezáz, which changes its name with every water. The early air was delightfully fresh and brisk, and the cattle stepped out as if walking were a pleasure: yet the Arabs declared that neither camels nor mules had found a full feed in the apparently luxuriant vegetation of the Fiumara-bed. The tract began badly over loose sandy soil, so honeycombed that neither man nor beast could tread safely: the Girdi (Jirdi), or "field rat," is evidently nocturnal like the jerboa, during the whole journey we never saw a specimen of either. A yellow wolf was descried skulking among the bushes, and a fine large hare was shot; porcupine-quills were common, and we picked up the mummy of a little hedgehog. The birds were swift-winged hawks and owls, pigeons and ring-doves; crows again became common, and the water-wagtail was tame as the Brazilian thrush, João de Barros: it hopped about within a few feet of us, quite ignoring the presence of Frenchmen armed with murderous guns. I cannot discern the origin of the pseudo-Oriental legend which declares that the "crow of the wilderness" (raven) taught Cain to bury his brother by slaying a brother crow, and scraping a grave for it with beak and claw. The murderous bird then perched upon a palm-tree, whose branches, before erect, have ever drooped, and croaked the truth into Adam's ear: hence it has ever been of evil augury to mankind. The hoopoe, which the French absurdly call coq de montagne, also trotted by the path-side without timidity; and the butcher-bird impudently reviewed the caravan from its vantage-ground, a commanding tree. The large swift shot screaming overhead; and the cries of the troops of Merops, with silver-lined wings, resembled those of the sand-grouse.
After some five miles the "Father of Glass" changed his name to Abú Daumah (of the "one Theban Palm"). Porphyritic trap lay on both sides of us. To the right rose the Jebel Ukbal, whose grey form (El-Ash'hab) we had seen from the heights above Umm el-Haráb: the whole range of four heads, forming the south-western rim of the Badá saucer, is known as El-Akábil. Below these blocks the Wady-sides were cut into buttresses of yellow clay, powdered white with Sabkh, or "impure salt." Charred circlets in the sand showed where alkali had been burned: the ashes, packed in skins, are shipped at El-Wijh for Syria, where they serve to make soap. The Bedawin call it Aslah (Athlah); the Egyptians Ghassálah ("the washer"), because, when rubbed in the hands, its succulent shoots clean the skin. Camels eat it, whereas mules refuse it, unless half-starved. This plant apparently did not extend all up the Wady. The water, where there is any, swings under the left bank; an ample supply had been promised to us, with the implied condition that we should camp at this Mahattat el-Urbán ("Halting place of the Arabs"), after a marching day of two hours! Seeing that we rode on, the Baliyy declared that they had searched for the two principal pools, and that both were dry, or rather had been buried by the Bedawin. But, with characteristic futility, they had allowed me to overhear their conversation; and the word was passed to the soldiers, who at once filled themselves and their water-skins.
Hitherto we had been marching south of east. Presently, where the pretty green Wady el-Surám falls into the left bank, we turned a corner, and sighted in front, or to the north, the great plain of Badá. The block, El-Akábil, had projected a loop of some ten miles to be rounded, whereas a short cut across it would not have exceeded three. And now the Wady Abá Daumah abruptly changed formation. The red and green traps of the right side made way for grey granite, known by its rounded bulging blocks on the sides and summit, by its false stratification, by its veins of quartz that strewed the sand, and by its quaint weathering—one rock exactly resembled a sitting eagle; a second was a turtle, and a third showed a sphinx in the rough. The Badá plain is backed by a curtain so tall that we seemed, by a common optical delusion, to be descending when we were really ascending rapidly.
Anxiety to begin our studies of the spot made the ride across the basin, soled with rises comfortably metalled, and with falls of sand unpleasantly loose and honeycombed, appear very long. The palm-clump, where men camp, with its two date-trees towering over the rest, receded as it were. At last, after a total of four hours and forty-five minutes (= sixteen miles), we dismounted at the celebrated groves, just before the ugly Khamsín arose and made the world look dull, as though all its colours had been washed out.
The dates form a kind of square with a sharp triangle to the south, upon the left bank of the thalweg, which overflows them during floods. The enceinte is the normal Arab "snake-fence" of dry and barked branches, which imperfectly defends the nurseries of young trees and the plots of Khubbayzah ("edible mallows") from the adjoining camping-place of bald yellow clay. The wells, inside and outside the enclosure, are nine; three stone-revetted, and the rest mere pits in the inchoate modern sandstone. The trees want thinning; the undergrowth is so dense as to be impenetrable; but the heads are all carefully trimmed, the first time we have seen such industry in Midian. The shade attracts vipers, chiefly the Echis: and I was startled by hearing the gay warble of the Bulbul—a nightingale in Arabia!
The next day was devoted to inspecting this far-famed site, with the following results. We have already seen a Bada' and a Badí'a , whilst there is a Badí'ah [65] further north. We are now at a Badá which fulfils all the conditions required by the centre and head-quarters of "Thamuditis." The site of the Bújat Badá, "the Wide Plain of Badá," as it is distinguished by the Arabs, represents, topographically speaking, a bulge in the Wady Nejd, before it becomes the Wady Abú Daumah, between the Shafah Mountains to the east and the Tihámah range seawards. The latitude is 26° 45' 30" = 0° 31' 30" north of El-Wijh [Footnote: Ahmed Kaptán's observation of Polaris. The (Bades) of Ptolemy is in north lat. 25° 30'.]. From its centre, a little south of our camping-place, the Jebel Zigláb of Shaghab, distant, according to Yákút, one march, bears 32°, and the Aslah (Athlah) cone 30° (both mag.): it lies therefore south of Shuwák, with a little westing. The altitude is upwards of twelve hundred feet above sea-level (aner. 28.72). The size of the oval is about nine statute miles from north to south, where the main watercourse breaks; and twelve miles from east to west, giving an area of some 108 square miles. The general aspect of the basin suggests that of El-Haurá; the growth is richer than the northern, but not equal to that of the southern country. The ruins belong to the Magháir Shu'ayb category, and the guides compare the Hawáwít with those of Madáin Sálih.
Such is the great station on the Nabathæan overland highway between Leukè' Kóme and Petra; the commercial and industrial, the agricultural and mineral centre, which the Greeks called the Romans, Badanatha (Pliny, vi. 32); and the mediæval Arab geographers, Badá Ya'kúb, in the days when the Hajj-caravan used to descend the Wadys Nejd and the "Father of Glass." Now it is simply El-Badá: the name of the "Prophet" Jacob, supposed to have visited it from Egypt or Syria, being clean forgotten.
The rolling plain is floored with grey granite, underlying sandstones not unlike coral-rag, and still in course of formation. Through this crust outcrop curious hillocks, or rather piles of hard, red, and iron-revetted rock, with a white or a rusty fracture—these are the characteristics of the basin. The lower levels are furrowed with their threads of sand, beds of rain-torrents discharged from the mountains; and each is edged by brighter growths of thorn and fan-palm. The fattening Salíb grass is scattered about the water; the large sorrel hugs the Fiumara-sides; the hardy Aushaz-thorn (Lycium), spangled with white bloom and red currants, which the Arabs say taste like grapes, affects the drier levels; and Tanzubs, almost all timber when old, become trees as large as the Jujube.