20 THE JEMFJUY QUAKTEK

or of aeolian origin cannot perhaps be determined with any
certainty, but the absence of fossils from all this vast tract,
including the Summan and the Hasa district, is quite re-
markable. Geologically the eastern desert would seem to
overlie the Cretaceous protruding from the sArma uplands,
the intermediate Eocene and the Miocene of the Jiban
depressions.

A chilly wind made our short sojourn on the Thuwair
eminence, barely 100 feet above the general level of the desert,
exceedingly unpleasant, and we were glad enough to descend
from our perch and resume the march. My companions had
perhaps begun to wonder what manner of man this was that
sought every possible occasion of discomfort to satisfy a
profitless curiosity. After all, there was nothing to see, so
why go out of one's way to look for it ? In all this country
and, in fact, as far southward as Anbak no rain had yet
fallen this season and the desert bore a very parched aspect
with scanty dry tufts of the familiar Arfnj and Thmnam and a
reedy grass, new to me, called Andah. During the previous
afternoon's march one of my companions had brought me a
flowered shaft of the obscene desert fungus known as
DJianun. It had been half eaten by a fox, hut cannot bo
eaten by man. Its cousin, more obscene in appearance,
because more naked, the Tarthnth or * Denert Ponis \ of
which also they brought me a specimen noon after leaving
Thuwair, is however edible by human hoinga, a salutary
purge.

What with the cold and the sluggish gait of my enormous
steed—and nothing is more tiring than continual goading of
a lazy camel with one's heel applied to the bane of the neck
and shoulder—I found the initial stiffneas resulting from the
first day's short ride getting worse as the march progrcaBod.
Once or twice my saddle had to be adjusted, for tho prodigious
hump of Al Bahraniya defied all tho efforts of 8afcd the groom
to saddle her comfortably or effectively, Xevorthdcmn wo
did a good day's march in spite of a determined but unnuc-
cessful effort on the part of Zayid to curtail it hefora wo
entered the great dune tract of Al Mughammidha which was
so utterly bare of vegetation that, once entered, there could