164 THE EMPTY QUARTER

tively recent denizens of an once prosperous tract. At
Tuwairifa there was again a river-bed with deep wells and
the tell-tale caravan tracks.

But beyond that the sands had closed viciously over any
further evidence there might be. And there were no other
pegs on which to hang theories than the fables retailed by
Yaqut in his fanciful ' Wonders of the World/ the Arabian
Nights' phantasy of the Cobbler Ma'ruf Js visit to the Rub' al
Kharab (Khali ?)x and vague echoes of JUj and Kin'ad in
such names as 'Auj2 and Jali'ad.3

Yet we had found two rivers, and there was a third—the
most important of all, Wadi Dawasir—still to be discovered.
The fact that we had not yet crossed its traces was all to the
good. And what more natural than that one of the greatest
capitals of prehistoric Arabia should be found on the banks
of its greatest prehistoric river ? I had not encouraged myself
to think in terms of Petra or Tutankhamon, but my brain
had caught the very mood of the shifting sands—always in
motion, gentle or violent, as the sea itself—and my dreams
these nights were nightmare vistas of long low barrack
buildings whirling round on perpetually radiating gravel
rays of a sandy desert, while I took rounds of angles on ever
moving objects with a theodolite set on a revolving floor.
It was the strangest experience of my life.

And now I was about to draw the veil from the mysteries
on which I had pondered so long with all the devotion of a
pilgrim setting out for Eleusis or the seat of Jupiter Ammon.
And incidentally we must have been within a mile or two of
one of the very spots marked by me on the map 14
years before on the strength of Jabir's bearings and distances.
I had wrongly labelled it Jafura and given the name of Wabar
on less precise information to the other spot at some distance
to the south-west. Yet if I had confined myself to the latter
name and to the spot indicated by Jabir as the site of
ruins and a block of iron, I should have been entitled to
share the credit which must be accorded to the memory
of a charming companion. It is certainly rare to get such

1 Burton's edition, 998th and 999th Nights. 2 ibidem, 989th Night.
s ibidem, 899th Hight.