FORGOTTEN RIVERS 135

5 p.m. when it dropped, leaving us to enjoy a clear, soft,
warm night.

Short though it was this march had been a dreary one and
our mournful procession had been strung out to a long
column. Zayid rode ahead with Humaid and Salih, talking
with his usual vivacity to a respectful audience. Not far
behind but alone rode Ibn Ma'addi, reciting passages from
the Quran which he knew by heart—during Bamdhan the
* reading ' of the book through as many times as possible is
accounted for virtue. Par behind, Sa'dan and I rode along
together conversing, and still further in the rear the rest
marched in a solid phalanx chanting a monotonous shanty.

At Bir Fadhil, whose eponymous digger was a former
Shaikh of 'Adhba, the premier section of Murra, though the
watering is regarded as the property of the Buqaih Ghafran,
we found four wells spread over a mile length in a wide de-
pression of the sands. The original1 shaft was out of action
and half filled with sand as the result of a visit in the pre-
ceding April by a raiding party of the Sa'ar tribe. They had
watered their animals and filled their skins but had not
troubled to replace the usual cover. I cast a stone into its
depths but there was no answering sound of water, though
one would have thought that it would have been simpler to
clear out the sand from a well in recent use than to dig a
new one. Not so, however, the Ghafran, who had set to in
the summer to excavate the shaft by which we now pitched
our tents in a small patch of gravel almost hidden by the
encroaching sand. How 'Ali knew the spot, apparently
described to him by its authors—for he had never seen it—
was a mystery, but he marched straight to it and dismounted
at what looked like a low mound of sand. He and others,
however, soon cleared away the latter and revealed the
covering of rafters and skins over the well-mouth. It was
found, however, that part of the cover had collapsed inwards,
admitting a good deal of sand into the shaft. Consequently
no watering was possible until Zayid, stripped to the waist,

1 Styled Umm or ' mother', while the others are JMiyat, apparently
meaning ' children *, though the word may refer to the fact that they are
old forgotten shafts rediscovered and re-excavated.