The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 by Richard Burton

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At Shuwak we allowed the camels a day of rest, whilst we planned
and sketched, dug into, and described the ruins. A difficulty
about drinking-water somewhat delayed us. The modern wells, like
those of the Hauran, are rudely revetted pits in a bald and shiny
bit of clay-plain below the principal block of ruins: only one in
the dozen holds water, and that has been made Wahsh ("foul") by
the torrent sweeping into it heaps of the refuse and manure
strewed around. The lower folds of the Sani' block also supply
rain-pools; but here, again, the Arabs and their camels had left
their marks. The only drinkable water lies a very long mile down
the southern (left) bank, above the old aqueduct, in a deep and
narrow gorge of trap. The perennial spring, still trickling down
the rocks, was dammed across, as remnants of cement show us, in
more places than one. There are also signs of cut basins, which
the barrages above and below once divided into a series of tanks.
Up the rough steps of the bed the camel-men drove their beasts;
and the name of a Gujrati maker, printed upon a sack of
Anglo-Indian canvas, had a curious effect among such Bedawi
surroundings.

At last we sank a pit some five feet deep in a re-entering angle
of the northern or smaller branch; we lined it with stone
down-stream, where the flow made the loose sand fall in, and we
obtained an ample and excellent supply. Doubtless it was spoiled,
as soon as our backs were turned, by the half-Fellah
Jerafin-Huwaytat, to whom the place belongs. The sea-breeze
during the day was high and dust-laden, but we passed a cool
delicious night upon the clean sweet sand, which does not stick
or cling. At this altitude there is no fear of bugs and
fleas--the only dread is Signor "Pediculus."

We will begin, with our surveyors, at the valley head, and note
the ruins as we stroll down. This section, Shuwak proper, is
nearly a mile and a half long, and could hardly have lodged less
than twenty thousand souls. But that extent by no means
represents the whole; our next march will prolong it along the
valley for a total of at least four miles. The material is
various--boulders of granite and syenite; squares of trap and
porphyry; the red sandstones of the Hisma; the basalts of the
Harrah; and the rock found in situ, a brown and crumbling grit,
modern, and still in process of agglutination. The heaps and
piles which denote buildings are divided by mounds and tumuli of
loose friable soil, white with salt,--miniatures of Babylon,
Nineveh, and Troy. On either flanks of the river-holm the
periodical torrents have done their worst, cutting up the once
regular bank into a succession of clay buttresses. On the right
side we find a large fort, half sliced away, but still showing
the concrete flooring of a tower. About the centre of the length
are the remnants of a round Burj; blocks of buildings, all
levelled to the foundations, lie to the north-west, and on the
west appear signs of a square. Perhaps the most interesting
discovery is that of catacombs, proving a civilization analogous
to Maghair Shu'ayb, but ruder, because more distant from the
centre. The "caves" are hollowed in a long reef of loose breccia,
which, fronting eastward, forms the right bank of the smaller
branch. They are now almost obliterated by being turned into
sheep-folds; the roofs have fallen in, and only one preserves the
traces of two loculi.

The arrangements touching fuel and water in this great
metal-working establishment are on a large scale. The biggest of
the Afran ("furnaces") lies to the north-west, near the right
bank of the valley: all are of the ordinary type, originally some
five or six feet high, to judge from the bases. They are built of
fire-brick, and of the Hisma stone, which faces itself into a
natural latex. We dug deep into several of them; but so careful
had been the workmen, or perhaps those who afterwards ransacked
these places, that not the smallest tear of metal remained: we
found only ashes, pottery, and scoriae, as usual black and green,
the latter worked sub-aerially; many of them had projections like
stalactite. Round the furnaces are strewed carbonate of lime,
stained black with iron, like that of Sharma; and a quantity of
the chlorite-enamelled serpentine still used in the Brazil as a
flux.

Quartz was absent, and we were at a loss to divine what stone had
been worked. At last we observed near the catacombs sundry heaps
of pinkish earth, evidently washed out; and our researches in the
South Country afterwards suggested that this may have been the
remains of the micaceous schist, whose containing quartz was so
extensively worked at Umm el-Harab. Moreover, a short study of
Shaghab threw more light on the matter.

Water also had been stored up with prodigious labour. We could
easily trace the lines of half a dozen aqueducts, mostly
channelled with rough cement, overlying a fine concrete; some of
them had grooved stones to divert the stream by means of lashers.
The Fiskiyyah or "tanks," as carefully built, were of all sizes;
and the wells, which appeared to be mediaeval, were lined with
stones cut in segments of circles: we shall see the same curve in
Sultan Selim's work near Ziba. The greatest feat is an aqueduct
which, sanded over in the upper part, subtends the left side of
the valley. It is carefully but rudely built, and where it
crosses a gully, the "horizontal arch" is formed of projecting
stone tiers, without a sign of key. This magnum opus must date
from the days when the southern part of the Wady was nearly what
it is now.

About a mile and a quarter below our camp, the Wady, which
broadens to a mile, shows on the left bank a wall measuring a
thousand metres long, apparently ending in a tank of 110 feet
each way. Around it are ruined parallelograms of every size,
which in ancient times may have been workshops connected with the
buildings in the island higher up. The torrents have now washed
away the continuation, if ever there was any; and, though the
lower remnants are comparatively safe upon their high ledge, the
holm is evidently fated to disappear.

I did not learn till too late that a single day's march
southwards from the Wady Shuwak, along the old main line of
traffic, leads to the Wady Nejd, upon whose upper course is the
plain of Bada; and which, after assuming four different names,
falls, as will be seen, into the sea about thirty-five miles
north of El-Wijh.

We left Shuwak considerably posed, puzzled, and perplexed by what
it had shown us. A little pottery had been picked up, but our
diggings had not produced a coin or even a bit of glass. The
evidences of immense labour are the more astonishing when
compared with the utter absence of what we call civilization. The
Greek and Latin inscriptions of the Hauranic cities declare their
origin: these, absolutely unalphabetic, refuse a single hint
concerning the mysterious race which here lived and worked, and
worked so nobly. And, finally, who were the Moslems that
succeeded them in a later day, when the Hajj-caravan, some three
centuries and a half ago, ceased to march by this road? How is it
that the annalists say nothing of them? that not a vestige of
tradition remains concerning any race but the Nazarenes?

From Shuwak to the Wady Damah there are two roads, a direct and
an indirect; the latter passing by the ruins of Shaghab. The
caravan begged hard to take the former, but was summarily
refused. At six a.m. we rode down the Shuwak valley, again noting
its huge constructions, and then striking away from it to the
left, we passed over a short divide of brown hill, where the
narrow Pass was marked only by Bedawi graves. The morning showed
a peculiar rainbow, if a bow may be called so when no rain
appeared; a perpendicular stripe, brilliant enough, and lasting
at least twenty minutes. The cloud behind it had no skirt, no
droop in fact, no sign of dissolution; and what made it the
stranger was that this "bull's-eye" lay north of, and not
opposite to, but quite near, the rising sun. We shall note
another of these exceptional rainbows at El-Bada.[EN#8]

After marching some seven miles to the south with westing, we saw
inform heaps to the left: half an hour afterwards,
boulder-encircled pits of a brighter green on the right, the
Themail el-Ma ("artificial cisterns") of the Arabs, announced
that we were reaching Shaghab. The caravan punished us by wasting
five hours on the way, in order to force a halt; and by camping
at the wrong place, when I objected to the delay. It brought with
it, however, a fine young Beden (ibex), killed by one of the
Bedawin; and we determined to stuff, to bury, and to bake it,
Arab fashion, under the superintendence of the Bash-Buzuk Husayn.
Unfortunately it was served to us on the next day cold, whereas
it should have been eaten at once, piping hot. The meat was dark,
with a beefy rather than a gamey flavour, palatable, but by no
means remarkable. There were loud regrets that a cuisse de
chevreuil had not been marinee; in fact, an infect odour of the
Quartier Latin everywhere followed us; and when a guide told us
the pattern lie, that we should not reach Umm 'Amir before the
fourth day, the poor "Frogs" croaked, and croaked audibly as
dismally. Their last bottle of ordinaire was finished; Gabr, the
Kazi, had come into camp, bearing a long official Arabic document
from Lieutenant Yusuf, but not a single Journal de Geneve; there
was no news of a steamer being sent with rations and forage from
Suez: briefly, c'etait embetant--to use the milder of the two
favourite synonyms.

The ruins of Shaghab are built upon a more complicated site than
those of Shuwak. The position is charming. The Wady Shaghab,
flowing to the south, here spreads out in a broad bulge or basin
open to the west. Down-stream we see a "gate" formed by the
meeting of two rocky tongue-tips, both showing large works.
Beyond these narrows the valley bends to the south-west and feeds
the Wady Aznab, which falls into the sea south of the Damah. The
mass of the ruined city lies upon the left bank, where a high and
artificial-looking remblai of earth masks an eastern influent,
the Wady el-Aslah (Athlah), or "of the Kali-plant." It drains the
mountain of the same name, and the Jebel Ziglab (Zijlab), the
cones of pale granite visible from Shuwak; and upon its broad
mouth the old settlement stood a cheval. A little north of west
rises profiled the great Sharr, no longer a ridge with a coping
of four horns, but a tall and portly block, from whose summit
spring heads and peaks of airy blue-pink. Slightly east of north
the twins Naghar and Nughayr, combining to form the "Mountain of
the Maker" (Jebel el-Sani'), tower in the shape of a huge
pyramid. Lastly, a regular ascent, the Majra el-Waghir, fronts
the city, sloping up to the west-north-west, and discloses a view
of the Jibal el-Tihamah: this broad incline was, some three
centuries ago, the route of the Hajj-caravan.

We walked down the Shaghab valley-bed, whose sides, like those of
the Damah, are chevaux de frise of dead wood. The characteristic
rock is a conglomerate of large and small stones, compacted by
hard silicious paste, and stained mauve-purple apparently by
manganese: we had seen it on the way to Shuwak; and the next
day's march will pave the uplands with it. The wells in the sole
are distinctly Arab, triangular mouths formed and kept open by
laying down tree-trunks, upon which the drawer of water safely
stands. On the right bank up-stream no ruins are perceptible;
those on the left are considerable, but not a quarter the size of
Shuwak. Here again appear the usual succession of great squares:
the largest to the east measures 500 metres along the sides; and
there are three others, one of 400 metres by 192. They are
subtended by one of many aqueducts, whose walls, two feet thick,
showed no signs of brick: it is remarkable for being run
underground to pierce a hillock; in fact, the system is rather
Greek or subterranean, than Roman or subaerial. Further down are
the remains apparently of a fort: heaps of land-shells lie about
it; they are very rare in this region, and during our four
months' march we secured only two species.[EN#9]

Still descending, we found the ancient or mediaeval wells,
numbering about a dozen, and in no wise differing from those of
Shuwak. At the gorge, where the Wady escapes from view,
Lieutenant Amir planned buildings on the lower right bank, and on
the left he found a wall about half a mile long, with the remains
of a furnace and quartz scattered about it. This stone had
reappeared in large quantities, the moment we crossed the divide;
the pale grey of the Jebel Ziglab and its neighbours was
evidently owing to its presence; and from this point it will be
found extending southwards and seawards as far as El-Hejaz. He
brought with him a hard white stone much resembling trachyte, and
fragments of fine green jasper.

A cursory inspection of Shaghab removed some of the difficulties
which had perplexed us at Shuwak and elsewhere. In the North
Country signs of metal-working, which was mostly confined to the
Wadys, have been generally obliterated; washed away or sanded
over. Here the industry revealed itself without mistake. The
furnaces were few, but around each one lay heaps of Negro and
copper-green quartz, freshly fractured; while broken handmills of
basalt and lava, differing from the rubstones and mortars of a
softer substance, told their own tale.

At Shaghab, then, the metalliferous "Maru" brought from the
adjacent granitic mountains was crushed, and then transported for
roasting and washing to Shuwak, where water, the prime necessary
in these lands, must have been more abundant. Possibly in early
days the two settlements formed one, the single of
Ptolemy; and the south end would have been the headquarters of
the wealthy. Hence the Bedawin always give it precedence--Shaghab
wa Shuwak; moreover, we remarked a better style of building in
the former; and we picked up glass as well as pottery.

As a turkey buzzard (vulture) is the fittest emblem for murderous
Dahome, so I should propose for Midian, now spoiled and wasted by
the Wild Man, a broken handmill of basalt upon a pile of spalled
Negro quartz.

Chapter XII.

From Shaghab to Ziba--ruins of El-Khandaki' and Umm Amil--the
Turquoise Mine-Return to El-Muwaylah.

Leaving Lieutenant Amir to map the principal ruins, we followed
the caravan up the Majra el-Waghir, the long divide rising to the
west-north-west. The thin forest reminded me of the wooded slopes
of the Anti-Libanus about El-Kunaytarah: there, however,
terebinths and holm-oaks take the place of these unlovely and
uncomfortable thorn-trees. They are cruelly beaten--an operation
called El-Rama--by the Bedawi camel-man, part of whose travelling
kit, and the most important part too, here as in Sinai, is the
flail (Murmar or Makhbat) and the mat to receive the leaves:
perhaps Acacias and Mimosas are not so much bettered by "bashing"
as the woman, the whelp, and the walnut-tree of the good old
English proverb. After three miles we passed, on the left, ruins
of long walls and Arab Wasm, with white memorial stones perched
on black. In front rose the tall Jebel Tulayh, buttressing the
right or northern bank of the Damah; and behind it, stained
faint-blue by distance, floated in the flickering mirage the
familiar forms of the Tihamah range, a ridge now broken into half
a dozen blocks. I had ordered the caravan to march upon the
Tuwayl el-Suk; but, after one hour and fifteen minutes, we found
the tents pitched some three miles short of it, on a bleak and
ugly wave of the Waghir. The Shaykhs swore, by all holy things,
that this was the veritable Tuwayl; and a Bedawi, who declared
that he knew where water lay in the neighbourhood, refused to
show it sans the preliminary "bakhshish." Mashallah! It is a
noble race.

Early next morning (six a.m., March 3rd) we followed the right
bank of the Wady el-Khandaki, which runs north with westing.
Beyond it lay the foot-hills of gloomy trap leading to the Jebel
el-Raydan, a typical granitic form, a short demi-pique saddleback
with inwards-sloping pommel like the Pao d'Assucar of picturesque
Rio de Janeiro. Here as elsewhere, the granites run parallel with
and seaward of the traps. The Tuwayl el-Suk is nothing but an
open and windy flat, where the Hajj-caravan used to camp an
adjoining ridge, the Hamra el-Tuwayl, shows spalled quartz, Wasm
and memorial stones. The principal formation here is the
mauve-purple conglomerate before described.

After riding nine miles we came unexpectedly upon a large and
curious ruin, backed by the broad Wady Damah gleaming white in
the sun. The first feature noticed was a pair of parallel walls,
or rather their foundations, thirty-five feet apart, and nearly a
kilometre in length: it looked like a vast hangar. To the left
lie three tracings of squares; the central is a work of earth and
stone, not unlike a rude battery; and, a few paces further north,
a similar fort has a cistern attached to its western curtain.
Heaps of rounded boulders, and the crumbling white-edged mounds
which, in these regions, always denote old habitations, run down
the right bank of the Wady el-Khandaki to its junction with the
Damah. For want of a better name I called this old settlement
Kharabat (the "Ruins of") el-Khandaki, and greatly regretted that
we had not time enough to march down the whole line of the Damah.

Half an hour more placed us at the great Wady, whose general
direction is here west with a little southing, and which still
merits its fame as an Arabian Arcadia. The banks were thickly
bordered with secular tamarisks (T. orientalis), those hardy
warriors with the Hebrew-Arabic name Asl (Athl), that battle
against wind and weather, as successfully at Dovercourt (Essex)
as at Haydarabad (Sind).

The tint was the normal grey-green, not unlike that of the traps
in arriere plan. The clumps sheltered goats, sheep, and camels;
and our mules now revel every day on green meat, growing fatter
and fatter upon the Aristida grass, the Panicum, the Hordeum
murinum, and the Bromus of many varieties. Fronting us rose the
twin granitic peaks of Jebel Mutadan, one with a stepped side
like an unfinished pyramid. They are separated from the Damah by
a rough and stony divide; and ruins with furnaces are reported to
be found in their valley-drain, which feeds the great Wady 'Amud.

We halted, after some sixteen to seventeen miles, at the water
El-Ziyayb, slightly brackish but relished by our animals; and
resumed our way in the cool sea-breeze at one p.m., passing the
Jebel Tulayh on the north bank. The track then left the Damah and
turned up a short broad bed to the north-west. On the right rose
a block of syenite, ruddy with orthose, all rounded lumps and
twisted finials; it discharged a quantity of black sand that
streaked the gravel plain. At four p.m. we camped on a broad
divide, El-Kutayyifah, where an adjacent Sha'b, or "fold,"
supplied fresh rain-water. The march had teen long (seven hours =
twenty-two miles); and Shaykhs and camel-men looked, the Sayyid
said, as if they had "smelt Jehannum."

This divide, also called the Jayb el Sa'luwwah, with granites to
the east, and traps mixed with granites on the west, shows signs
of labour. Hard by, to the south-west, some exceptionally
industrious Bedawi, of the Jerafin-Huwaytat, had laid out a small
field with barley. In the evening we walked westward to the hills
that bound the slope; and came upon a rock-cut road leading to an
atalier, where "Maru" has been spalled from the stone in situ.
Some specimens had a light-bluish tinge, as if stained by cobalt,
a metal found in several slags; and there were veins of
crystalline amethyst-quartz, coloured, said the engineer by
chlorure of silver (?). The filons and filets cut the granite in
all directions; and the fiery action of frequent trap-dykes had
torn the ground-rock to tatters. The western side of
El-Kutayyifah also showed modern ruins.

The guides reported, as usual when too late, that to the
west-south-west lies a Nakb, called Abu'l Marwah ("Father of the
Quartz-place"), whose waters flow via the Mutadan to the 'Amud
valley. For some days I had cold shudders lest this Pass, thus
left unvisited, might be the Zul-Marwah, the classical
"Mochoura," one of the objects of our Expedition. The alarm
proved, however, as will be seen, false. A Bedawi youth also
volunteered a grand account of three "written stones;" a built
well surrounded by broken quartz; and, a little off the road from
El-Kutayyifah to Umm Amil, the remains of El-Dayr ("the
Convent"). As Leake well knew, the latter is "a name which is
often indiscriminately applied by the Arabs to ancient ruins."
The lad said they were close by, but the Garib ("near") and the
Gurayyib ("nearish") of the Midianite much resemble the Egyptian
Fellah's Taht el-Wish, "Under the face"--we should say "nose"--or
Taht el-Ka'b, "Under the heel." They may mean a handful of miles.
As he refused to guide us, we secured the services of an old
shepherd, who, objecting to sleep in camp, caused abundant
trouble and delay next morning.

From this divide two roads lead to the ruins of Umm Amil: one
makes a considerable detour up a branch-valley in order to avoid
an ugly Pass on the direct line. I again refused the camel-men
permission to proceed by the indirect route, well knowing that
they would do their best to miss us. On March 4th, at six a.m., a
long descent and a similar rise led us to a Col, which presently
became a broad open plain, 2100 feet above sea-level (aner.
28.85). Tents were scattered about the valleys; the lads tended
their goats, and we greatly admired one fellow who had fallen
asleep in the hot ascending steams. Here the old guide halted us,
and declared that on the top of the dark trap-block the left
(south) was a Mashghal, or "work-place," with a strew of quartz
and nothing else. Thus ended the "built well." Descending to a
lower plane, bounded in front by low rolling hills, I sent
Lieutenant Amir to examine the "Convent" and the "written
stones." He came up with us at the halt; having been led over a
rough divide by an abominable path; and he had seen only a few
ruined heaps and three Arab Wusum. Moreover, he had not dared to
show disappointment before the old shepherd, who would probably
have bolted in fear, and left him to find his own way.

Meanwhile the caravan continued its course down the broad smooth
Wady Ruways, on whose left side was a large atelier, with broken
walls and spalled quartz of the Negro variety. Here we found, for
the first time, the handmills made of the hardest grey granite,
so beautifully worked further south; they explained the fine and
carefully polished tube which had been brought to the first
Expedition at Ziba.[EN#10] Several of these articles were all but
whole, an exception in this land of "'clasts." We then struck
over the stony divide to the left, towards a fine landmark--a
Khitm, or "block," shaped like a seal cut en cabochon: its name
is the barbarous sounding Khurm el-Badariyyah. During the ascent,
which was easy, we passed a second strew and scatter of the white
stone broken into small pieces. From the Col, reached at 9.45
a.m., a descent, vile for camels not for mules, presently landed
us in the Wady Umm Amil. The left bank of the hideous narrow
gorge showed a line of wells or water-pits, made, said Furayj, by
the Mutakaddimin (veteres),--the Ancients who were probably
Mediavals. Crossing the torrent-gully we left on its right bank
the ruins of large works, especially the upper parallelogram.
After a thirteen miles' ride we halted at 10.40 a.m. under a rock
on the left side, opposite three couthless heaps of water-rolled
stones surrounded by fine quartz. By far the poorest thing we had
yet seen, this "town" had been grandiosely described to the first
Expedition at Ziba. Many blessings were heaped upon the head of
Amil and his mother: the name, however, as the Sayyid suggested,
is evidently a corruption of Mu'amil--"the workman, the
employee."[EN#11] I would conjecture that here the slave-miners
were stationed, Old Ziba being the master's abode: our caravan
entitled it El-Loman--"the bagnio, the prison for galeriens." On
the coast-town I procured some specimens of heavy red copper
which had been dug out of a ruined furnace; the metal is
admirable, and it retrieves to a certain extent the lost
reputation of Umm Amil.

At noon we resumed a hot ride down the ugly, rocky watercourse,
both of whose banks showed long lines of ruins. Presently,
crossing a divide marked by two stone-heaps, we fell into the
broader but equally unpicturesque Wady Salma. It is on about the
same parallel as Ziba' (north lat. 27 20'); and more than the
usual allowance for the error of low latitude must be admitted if
we would identify it with the Mediterranean of
Ptolemy (vi. 7), , in north lat. 260 , or fifteen
miles south of Soaka.

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