[p.461] regular supply of water, dried up and fell, and the sands, with
the winter rains and torrents, gradually effected the petrifaction. I
have seen specimens of the petrified wood of date trees found in the
Libyan desert, beyond the Bahr bala ma, where they were observed by
Horneman in 1798, and in 1812, by M. Boutin, a French officer, who
brought several of them to Cairo. They resemble precisely those which I
saw on the Suez road, in colour, substance, and texture. Some of them
are of silex, in others the substance seems to approach to hornblende.
We continued our route E. by S. over an uneven and somewhat hilly
country covered with black petrosilex; and after a days march of eight
hours and a quarter, we halted in a valley of little depth, called Wady
Onszary [Arabic], where our camels found good pasture. Close by are some
low hills, where the sands are seen in the state of formation into sand-
rock, and presenting all the different gradations between their loose
state and the solid stone. I saw a great quantity of petrified wood upon
one of these hills, amongst which was the entire trunk of a date tree.
April 22d.From Onszary we travelled E. by S. for one hour, and then E.
At the end of three hours, the hilly country terminates, beyond which,
in this route, no petrified wood is met with; we then entered upon a
widely extended and entirely level plain, called by the Bedouins El
Mograh [Arabic], upon which we rested after a march of five hours and a
half. While we were preparing our dinner two ostriches approached near
enough to be distinctly seen. A shot fired by one of the Arabs
frightened them, and in an instant they were out of sight. These birds
come into this plain, from the eastward, from the desert of Tyh; but I
never heard that the Bedouins of this country take the trouble of
hunting them. The plain of Mograh is famous for the skirmishes which
have taken place there, for the caravans that have been plundered in