64	THE EMPTY QUARTER
wolves and hyenas, bustards and other things, but all to no
purpose.
It had certainly been something of a disappointment to me
that we had found neither ruins nor traces of early man at
Anbak,^1 always though rather vaguely spoken of as a locality
of some ancient importance. The fossils had however been
some compensation for this failure and we found the little
spiral shells again in plenty in and about the plantation.
Otherwise the place was of little interest except for the fact
that it lay a few feet below sea-level. Such a site would
scarcely have remained unoccupied in ancient times, but
there was in fact no surviving trace of occupation earlier than
the founding of the little Ikhwan hamlet by one Salim ibn
Nuqaidan a dozen or more years ago. Its now derelict mud-
hovels lay grouped round a rather larger building of the same
type with a spacious open court, which had served as the
local mosque.
Next day at dawn there was a light dew upon the ground
and clouds in the sky, while a thick white fog lay low upon
the valley, rolling slowly down towards the sea. The cliffs
and headlands showed up above it, seemingly suspended in
mid-air. The atmosphere was as mild as we could wish and
the baggage-train was got off to a good start. Just as I was
getting ready to mount myself, I was astonished at being
accosted by a deputation of two Marri ladies from the neigh-
bouring tents—the wife and a younger relative of a sectional
Shaikh named Ibn 'Afair—with a bevy of very lugubrious
children clinging timidly about their trailing skirts. Oh
Shaikh 'Abdullah ! began the older lady with the bright-
eyed girl in active support and the tearful children as
chorus, they have taken away our bitch and we have nought
but her to bring us meat from the desert, for our men are
away, as you know, and only we women are left behind
with these children. All along we had desired to secure a
Saluqi hound if we could to hunt for the pot—and the
Museum—and we had on one or two occasions seen animals
which had been rejected as unsuitable. The previous evening
indeed a dog had been offered to us and refused with thanks,
^1 Incidentally our maps have hitherto wrongly shown the name as Mabaq.