236 THE EMPTY QUARTER

favourable seasons to wander to a distance of four or five
days' journey from Shanna, Ziqirt and Naifa in search of pas-
tures for their animals and Oryx or Rim gazelles for the pot.
But in such cases they would always return in due course
(when their camels needed water) to their base-wells and
would thus never have occasion to penetrate further afield
into the inhospitable desert. Similarly, as they well knew,
hunting parties frequently enough visited the heart of the
waterless desert from the Aflaj and Dawasir districts to shoot
Oryx for ultimate sale in their home markets, where the flesh
of the unicorn is considered a great and invigorating delicacy.
Indeed a complete carcase, properly cured by drying in sun
and wind, might well fetch prices as high as LlO, or even L20
in a season of scarcity. Such parties would, however, inevitably
return from the hunting-grounds to their familiar waterings
and would never want to visit Shanna or other such desert
wells even if they could locate them. Suwid had penetrated
from Sulaiyil with such parties to the districts of Al Jalada
(Jilida) and Raida on more than one occasion, while Salim
knew the Oryx grounds southwards of Wadi Dawasir towards
Najran and had crossed the northern fringes of the waterless
desert between Maqainama and the Afiaj district and from
Bir Fadhil direct to Sulaiyil. Indeed, as they declared, only
the more adventurous of the Murra Arabs—men like 'AH
Jahman, Hamad ibn Sultan, Ibn Nifl, Ibn Fasl and some
others—would go forth hunting in these generally rainless and
pastureless districts, while any raiding party that might have
occasion to traverse them in any direction would of necessity
skirt the desert fringe and keep within reasonable reach of the
borderland waterings in order to call at them in case of need.
There was thus obviously no useful object to be served
under the normal conditions of Arab life by a direct crossing
of this vast waterless wilderness from side to side and, though
it was and is perhaps difficult to believe that such a crossing
had never been attempted or accomplished before just for fun
or from sheer love of adventure, I can only place on record the
fact that neither from my own companions nor from anyone
that we met at Sulaiyil or elsewhere could I learn of any such
attempt or achievement. It is therefore possible, and perhaps