348 THE EMPTY QUARTER

until this month. Yet see how the Sa'dan is sprouting every-
where. There was indeed a sheen of delicate green upon the
gentle slopes and Suwid, with constant soundings in the
sand, found an average depth of two or three feet for the
moisture left by the recent rainfall.

Ear off, perhaps six or seven miles, to the south-west
appeared the long sand-ridge of Mushaimikh, a familiar land-
mark of the Sulaiyil hunters. It betokened our approach to
the end of Al Qaunis, from whose last ridge we soon looked
out indeed on a scene that filled us with rejoicing—a vast
blue sea as it were, the great steppe plain of Al Jidda1
backed by the distant coast of the Tuwaiq barrier. ' The
veritable desertJ was at last behind us, and our eyes rested
once more on the borders of the sown. Somewhere in the
folds of the great upland before us lay our destination,
Sulaiyil; and Suwid and Salim were able to identify the
isolated hillock of Abraq ibn Jaffal, where they had once
halted during a journey to Maqainama from the west. It lay
far off to the north-west, and somewhere in the desert, about
15 or 20 miles from it, they remembered to have drawn water
on that occasion from a pool that the rain had formed in a
great rock depression known as Makiniya. At first the
steppe was lightly dusted with sand, overflowing from the
fringes of Qaunis; but gradually we passed into an unre-
lieved wilderness of rock and gravel, dark of colour and all
but bare of vegetation. A line of flat-topped hillocks stood
out from the higher ground behind them, the relic of an old
line of low cliffs, which converged on our course ahead from
the north-east. Prom them the desert ran back to the hazy
horizon of the distant uplands, and again we rejoiced as we
marched on before the cool breeze from the east. How
different it all was from yesterday, when we had suffered
torments of heat and thirst and uncertainty ! The very sky
had changed its mood, and the distant scene ahead, for all
its dreariness of aspect, was yet the home of men. Verily
Tuwaiq is our father, exclaimed Sa'dan, whose own home
lay in a fold of this same upland barrier, some hundreds of
miles to the north; yes, Tuwaiq is our father, as the Dahna

1 In full Jiddat al Farsha; also sometimes called Hidbat al Farsha.