222 THE EMPTY QUARTER

discovery of a sprinkling of spiral shells. And so we came at
about 3.30 p.m. to our evening camp at the edge of an exten-
sive patch of gypsum, facing a horseshoe cliff, with a steep
escarpment whose summit stood some 40 feet above the
sandy pit-floor. This exposure seemed to be of sufficient
importance to be christened, at 'Ali's suggestion, Umm al
Qurun—a name which the following morning we extended to
include a similar but smaller outcrop of rock in a neighbour-
ing hollow about 500 yards away.

By now I was utterly weary and glad enough to camp
after a march of only a little more than 20 miles. The salt
or the sultriness had suddenly sapped my energy, and I
lay down to sleep soundly for an hour or so in the lengthening
shadow of one of my boxes. On this occasion as at our last
camp I dispensed with the tent and the night was delightful.
The great sheet of white gypsum glistened in the bright
moonlight and the sands around us seemed to enclose the
scene with a veil of mystery.

Next morning we still marched for more than an hour in
the Hadhat abu Khashba tract, which was dotted with fre-
quent rock exposures, to one group of which—a wide, flat,
plate-like circle of grey-blue rock with two small patches of
white gypsum near it—we gave the name of Umm al Sah-
nain,1 The country had now degenerated into a broken,
reddish down-tract with frequent short lines of dunes, until
we came to a long double ridge beyond which we entered the
Hadh-less tract of Ramla (or Khilla) Daugha, whose name-
cone lay at some distance to our right out of sight, commem-
orating the fruitless labours of some of the Ghafran in an
attempt to dig down to water through a rock exposure in its
side. A little beyond this point we halted on the north side
of a ridge overlooking the rolling downs and valleys of the
Shanna country to give Zayid and another sufficient time to
prospect the approaches to the well before our oncoming.

After a decent interval, during which 'Ali had pointed
out to me all the familiar landmarks of what he regarded as
the home pastures of his own folk, we slowly resumed our
march. Three bustard flew away before us, and a little

1 Mother of two plates.