The Land of Midian, vol 2 | Page 6

feet are red like the
smaller "Greek" caccabis that inhabits the Hismá; the male birds have
no spurs, and they are but little larger than their mates. There seems to
be no difficulty in keeping them; we bought a hen and chicks caged at
El-Wijh, but whether they lived or not I neglected to note. Here, too,
we learned the reason why the falcons and the hawks (Falco milvus, F.
gentilis, etc.) are so fierce and so well-fed. The tyrant of the air raises
the partridge or the quail by feinting a swoop, and, as it hurries away
screaming aloud, follows it leisurely at a certain distance. Finally, when
the quarry reaches the place intended--at least, the design so
appears--the falcon stoops and ends the chase. The other birds were
ring-doves, turtles, and the little "butcher" impaling, gaily as a "gallant
Turk," its live victim upon a long thorn.
Shuwák, which lies in about north lat. 27° 15', can be no other than the
placed by Ptolemy (vi. 7) in north lat. 26° 15'; and, if so, we
must add one degree to his latitudes, which are sixty miles too
low.[EN#7] According to Sprenger ("Alt. Geog.," p. 25), and
do not fit into any of the Alexandrian's routes; and were
connected only with their ports Rhaunathos (M'jirmah?) and Phoenicon
Vicus (Zibá?). But both these cities were large and important centres,
both of agriculture and of mining industry, forming crucial stations on
the great Nabathæan highway, the overland between Leukè Kóme and
Petra. The line was kept up by the Moslems until Sultán Selim's
superseded it; and hence the modern look of the remains which at first
astonished us so much. The tradition of the Hajj-passage is distinctly
preserved by the Bedawin; and I have little doubt that metal has been
worked here as lately, perhaps, as the end of the last century. But by
whom, again, deponent ventures not to say, even to guess.

The site of Shuwák is a long island in the broad sandy Wady of the
same name, which, as has been remarked, feeds the Dámah. Its thalweg
has shifted again and again: the main line now hugs the southern or left
bank, under the slopes and folds of the Jebel el-Sáni'; whilst a smaller
branch, on the northern side, is subtended by the stony divide last
crossed. At the city the lay of the valley is from north-east to
south-west, and the altitude is about seventeen hundred feet (aner.
28.28). The head still shows the castellations of the Hismá. Looking
down-stream, beyond the tree-dotted bed and the low dark hills that
divide this basin from the adjoining Wady to the south, we see the tall
grey tops of the Jebel Zigláb (Zijláb) and of the Shahbá-Gámirah--the
"ashen-coloured (Peak) of Gámirah"--the latter being the name of a
valley. Both look white by the side of the dark red and green rocks; and
we shall presently find that they mark the granite region lying south
and seaward of the great trap formations. We were not sorry to see it
again--our eyes were weary of the gloomy plutonic curtains on either
side.
At Shuwák 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 Haurán, 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
Sáni' 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 Gujráti
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 Jeráfín-Huwaytát, to whom the place belongs.
The sea-breeze during the day was high