View near Rashida.
Note the wooded height in the background and the scrub-lined stream in foreground from the well under the large tree on the right. ([p. 49]).
A Conspicuous Road—to an Arab.
Two small piles of stone, or ’alems can, with difficulty, be seen. Arabs can march for hundreds of miles through a waterless desert, relying on landmarks such as these. ([p. 86]).
Battikh.
A type of sand erosion, known as battikh or “watermelon” desert. ([p. 308]).
We left the camp about half-past seven. Soon after four we entered what is known as a redir—that is to say, a place where water will collect after one of the rare desert rains. It was a very shallow saucer-like hollow, a few feet in depth, the floor of which consisted of clay. The farther side of this was covered with sand, and here we found the grass for which we had been searching.
It was very thinly scattered over an area a few hundred yards in diameter. It was quite shrivelled and to all appearances completely dead. But it was the first vegetation we had seen on the plateau to the south-west of Dakhla. This redir showed a noticeable number of tracks of the desert rats, and was probably one of their favourite feeding grounds.