96 THE EMPTY QUARTER

the great King of Wabar. That one at least of the old man-
sions—and perhaps the greatest—was destroyed by fire in
some form is rendered certain by the ashes that have given it
its name, Umm al Ramad,1 but we need not follow the modern
story-tellers in the highest flights of their fancy which attri-
butes to 'Ad the use of gunpowder for the destruction of the
enemy stronghold!

We spent the days of our sojourn at Jabrin in exploring
the whole oasis as thoroughly as possible from those very
ruins of Umm al Ramad amid the rolling downs of sand on
the northern fringe of the oasis, which we made our base of
operations. My companions would have preferred to remain
on the water at Mushammara but I was anxious to select for
my astronomical observations a site as near as possible to
Major Cheesman's camp of 1924. The exact site of his work
I failed to determine as all our researches failed to discover
the 40-foot well of which he speaks,2 though the single mud-
built dwelling of eight years ago was now swollen to the
dimensions of a hamlet of six houses, of which the largest
was that of the late Hamad ibn Muradhdhaf and another the
local mosque. In this village we found two wells with
water at three fathoms and palm-timbers framing their
mouths. The settlement, now completely deserted after a
gallant but losing battle with the fever, lies at a distance of a
quarter hour to the south-east of Umm al Ramad in a fold
of the sandy downs less than a mile north of the first palms
of the oasis—a grove belonging to one Salih ibn Minya and
containing a well with water reputed to be the equal of
Mushammara in sweetness. Its depth was not more than
10 feet.

The first day we spent in exploring the oasis southward
from Mushammara with the result that we did not arrive at
the ruins of Qasr Umm al Ramad till after dark. Next
morning I found a heavy dew on the ground and on the
plentiful vegetation of the downs, while a thick mist de-
scended upon and blotted out the landscape after sunrise. I
spent all the morning until considerably past midday in

1 Meaning ' Mother of ashes ' ; Major Cheesman's Jam Ramad.

2 In Unknown Arabia, p. 260.