THE ESTUARIES OF JIBAN 57

rest in camp and there is meat to be had. Fortunately the
heavy artillery was on our side, including the chaplain, and
of the five only 'Ali failed to keep the whole thirty days of
the fast without a break, while Suwid went on to do the extra
six days of the voluntary fasting after the feast-day that
ended fiamdhan. (The day of the fog' thus became a land-
mark in our wanderings.

On coming to camp from our expedition to Salwa I found
that our party had been reinforced by the arrival of Salih
ibn 'Aziz, a sectional Shaikh of the Al bu Mandhar, one of
three main groups of the Manasir tribe. It was the camels of
this group that we had seen watering at Salwa, having come
up via? Dauha from their summer-quarters and palm-groves
in the Dhafra district over against Oman. Their chief oasis
settlement has hitherto been shown on our maps as Liwa on
the strength of the pronunciation of the Manasir themselves,
who have a strongly developed tendency to change J into Y
and to labialise the DH and other letters of the Arabic
alphabet. The correct name of the place, as they all agreed
when we discussed the matter, is Al Jiwa.1

Salih's brother, who had also come along to see him off on
his long journey, departed to the tents of his own folk in the
morning when, having started off our baggage-train on the
direct route to Anbak, we set out to visit the Abu Arzila
wells, two water-pits of a fathom depth in a circular sandy
depression in the midst of the downs. Here we found about
100 camels of another Manasir group, the Al bu Bahma2
whose chief Shaikh is Sa'id ibn Suwit, watering under the
charge of a few herdsmen. Just before reaching the wells,
about two miles from camp, we were joined by two men, who
turned out to be the young shaikhling whom we had met the
previous day at Salwa with a servant in attendance. After
leaving that locality they had enjoyed good sport with their
hawks, and the young man had had the charming civility to
come over, seeking us out in the desert, with his bag of three

1 Or Al Jua, the interior ; cf. Al Batina (inner) and Al Dhahira (outer),
districts E, and W. respectively of the main Oman range; of. also Kharija
and Dakhila, the c outer J and ' inner ' oases of the Libyan desert.

2 The third group, which we did not encounter at all, is Abal Sha'r, whose
leader is Ghanim ibn Juraib.