The Land of Midian, vol 2 | Page 7

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, Shuwák 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 Hismá; 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 Magháir 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 Afrán ("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 Hismá 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 Sharmá; 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-Haráb. 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 Fiskíyyah 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 Sultán Selim's work near Zibá. 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