[p.611] and by crawling, rather than walking, we reached the lower
platform of Serbal just about noon, and reposed under the shade of a
rock. Here we finished our stock of milk and of water; and Hamd, who
remembered to have heard once that a well was in this neighbourhood,
went in search of it, but returned after an hours absence, with the
empty skin. I was afterwards informed, that in a cleft of the rock, not
far from the stone tank, which I have already mentioned, there is a
small source which never dries up. We had yet a long journey to make,
Hamd, therefore, volunteered to set out before me, to fill the skin in
the valley below, and to meet me with it at the foot of the cleft; by
which we had entered the mountain. He departed, leaping down the
mountain like a Gazelle, and after prolonging my siesta I leisurely
followed him, with the other Arab. When we arrived, at the end of two
hours and a half, at the point agreed upon, we found Hamd waiting for us
with the water, which he had brought from a well at least five miles
distant. A slight shower of rain which had fallen, instead of cooling
the air appeared only to have made it hotter.
Instead of pursuing, from our second halting-place, the road by which we
had ascended in the morning from Ain Rymm, we took a more western
direction, to the left of the former, and reached by a less rapid
descent, the Wady Aleyat [Arabic], which leads to the lower parts of
Wady Feiran. After a descent of an hour, we came to a less rocky
country.
At the end of an hour and a half from the foot of Serbal, where Hamd had
waited for us, we reached the well, situated among date-plantations,
where he had filled the skins; its water is very good, much better than
that of Feiran. The date-trees are not very thickly planted; amongst
them I saw several Doum trees, some of which I had already observed in
other parts of the peninsula. This valley is inhabited by Bedouins
during the date-harvest,