90 THE EMPTY QUARTER

The sand-ridges now gave way to a sandy plain extending
between the vast salt-flat on our left (our course being now
very slightly north of west) and the edge of the steppe desert,
which here ran down towards the edge of the depression in
a series of well-marked ridges studded with higher buttress-
like headlands. At one of these, vaguely labelled Khashm al
Khin, we drew rein for a while to enable me to survey the
country from its summit some 50 feet above the level of the
plain. From here the edge of the steppe could be picked out
in such eminences as Al Usba5 (a tiny needle of rock at the
end of a ridge on the north side of the Juba basin) almost due
west; a group of eroded rocks to north-west called Ghar al
Jaul; and the twin headlands of Fardat al Khin to the north-
east. Here and there small isolated rocks rose out of the salt-
flat to south and south-west, while the palms of Birkan were
visible to the south-eastward. They pointed out also another
miserable palm-clump marking the position of Bid' al Nakhla
somewhat south of west and the palms of Khin itself due
west.

Towards the latter we now directed our course over a plain
of alternating sand and light gravel with patches of the ex-
posed white or pinkish sandstone bed-rock. On the way, and
with much to do and fuss involving practically every mem-
ber of the cavalcade, they extricated a charming little Jerboa
from its hole in the sand, while on a bare stalk of Ghadha
I had the pleasure of finding and capturing my first—and,
as it turned out, only—specimen of the Leopard Moth
discovered by and named after Major Cheesman. My com-
panions stood by and wondered if I had suddenly taken leave
of my senses as I dismounted to stalk the quarry, which in
fact they did not see until it had fallen still slumbering peace-
fully into a killing-bottle to be held up to their admiring gaze.

And so we came to Khin, a wretched little hamlet of six
mud-huts, of which one was the mosque and another, the
largest, the residence of the chief of the little ITchwan colony,
along the western base of a low sand-ridge. The huts were
arranged in a rough semicircle with four wells in the open
space between them and the ridge. Of these one was com-
pletely buried by sand, while another encircled by a wall was