SOUTHERN JAFURA 71

Mantids in the gravel. From time to time we saw the tracks
of hares, foxes and other animals but that was the nearest we
got to making their acquaintance, and I wondered whether
the eagle ever found anything to reward his patient soarings.

Such for the next three days was the scene of our wander-
ings. About eight miles from the eastern fringe of the sands
we came in their midst to the well of Qadha, which was a
welcome break in our monotonous proceedings. How 'Ali
ever found it without map or compass and, again, only the
vague memory of a single visit several years before, I cannot
pretend to explain, but he did lead us to it almost in a bee-
line ; and when we came to it there was nothing to see
except a litter of camel-dung half buried in the sand to
mark a pit over which the desert had spread an impenetrable
veil. The shaft, situated in the cavity of a horse-shoe dune,
had been in use as recently as five years ago, since when it
had been neglected and allowed to disappear. Its depth to
water was five fathoms.

Similar wells in this part of Jafura, and both apparently
still in use, are Zibda (a day's journey to south of Qadha) and
Sha'la (two days to WSW., and a little north of the line of
Wadi Sahba), while in a westerly direction one might strike
the Hasa-Jabrin camel-route in two days. Half a day on in
the same direction one would, according to JAli, come to the
wells of Haradh, of whose existence Major Cheesman was for
some reason so sceptical that he erased it from the map in
which I had, tentatively and on hearsay information, in-
serted it as a result of my journeys in 1917-18. It is true that
I had been mistaken in assuming that this watering and K.b.in
(of which more hereafter) must be in the bed of the Sahba
channel and on or near the main Hasa-Jabrin route. But
there can no longer be any doubt about the existence of
Haradh approximately in the position here indicated—
perhaps 10 to 15 miles north-west of the position originally
suggested by me—for it lies on the only feasible motor-route
between Hasa and Jabrin and incidentally it is on an alternative
and longer camel-route with the advantage of water at half-
way. It had been visited by several of my present com-
panions either by car or camel. Furthermore this watering