'The Expedition for the survey of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, carried on by order of the British government, in the years 1835, 1836, and 1837; preceded by geographical and historical notices of the regions situated between the rivers Nile and Indus. In four volumes. With fourteen maps and charts, and embellished with ninety-seven plates, besides numerous wood-cuts. Volume the first.' [‎574] (665/905)

574
DESERTS OF ARABIA.
[CHAP. XXII.
Sandy deserts, places, the four descriptions of desert already noticed; but
happily the worst and most forbidding portion forms the ex
ception. The deep sand which characterizes this kind of
desert is found at certain places in 'Oman and Tehameh, and
again in the level tract near the upper part of the shores of
the Red Sea, also in some spots about the lower Euphrates,
likewise in El Asha, and probably at intervals in the deserts
of Ahkaf and Roba-el-Khali. In these tracts nature denies
all verdure and every kind of tree or shrub, with the exception
of the date-tree, whose roots, in some spots, find moisture,
stony deserts. Another kind, which presents a hard baked surface of flints
and pebbles caked together and seemingly quite impenetrable,
also forms- part of the surface of Arabia. This is scantily
supplied with verdure, but it displays a few hardy shrubs, and
now and then some deep purple-coloured lilies, which are
almost leafless.
Salt deserts. A third description, the salt desert, is more common. Saline
tracts with a brittle cracked surface are met with eastward
of Palmyra, and in other parts of Arabia Deserta; also in El
Asha and Nejd, and doubtless in Roba-el-Khali. In these
parts of the territory are found the soap-plants, sheinan and el
kali, with occasionally the rhetem, or camel-thorn, and even
the leafless purple iris. Somewhere towards the eastern side
of the Roba-el-Khali, an extensive plain covered with a quick
sand of great depth, has recently been met with by Baron Von
Wrede, who was unable to find a bottom with a line of 60 feet. 1
TheBarr. These unpromising tracts have probably given rise to the
belief that Arabia is merely a vast arid desert, either inter
spersed with spots of fertile ground 2 or almost entirely a de
sert, 3 whereas the greatest part is of the fourth kind, called
Barr 4 by the Arabs, which, in fact, is merely an uncultivated
land, 5 diversified with hill and dale, like the Dorsetshire downs.
It bears the liquorice plant and some aromatic shrubs; and
1 Royal Geographical Journal, 1844, vol XIV., p. 111.
2 Edinburgh Gazetteer, art.' Arabia.' 3 Encyclopsedia Metropolitana.
4 Wherever Arabs are met with in tents, they denominate their place of
encampment Barr, or wilderness ; Zahara, or desert, being more particularly
applied to the wilderness of Africa.—MS. of Mr. Rassam.
5 See above, page 535.