ملف ١٩١٧/٧٥٦ الجزءان ٢-٣ "النشرات العربية أرقام ٦٦-١١٤" [و‎‎١‎٠‎٤] (٨٣٤/٢١٦)

— 61
JOURNEY ACROSS ARABIA.
II. Riyadh to Taif.
The trip to Taif once decided upon, it did not take long to
make the necessary preparations or to call in the camels from
their grazing grounds, and before midday on December 9 , Ibn
Sand having previously in my presence given the most explicit
instructions to the leaders of my party that my slightest wish
was to be considered his command, we mounted our camels before
the palace gates and in a few minutes issued from the city by
the south-western gate.
My intention at the moment of starting was to journey to
Taif by the ordinary Hajj route and, having finished what I had
to do there, to return by a southern route down the Wadi
Dawasir to Sulaiyyil and thence back to Riyadh. The whole
journey, I calculated, would take about forty to fifty days if all
went well. As it turned out, however, circumstances necessitated
the prolongation of my journey to Jeddah, whence I found to
my great chagrin 1 was not destined to return —at least by land.
Riyadh is situated at an elevation of about 1,750 feet above
sea-level, in a valley jutting out perhaps a mile to the northward
from the direct south-easterly line of the Wadi Hanifa, which is
locally known as the Batin at this point. Our course to
Daraiyya accordingly lay to the north of the wadi, along the
high ground on its' left bank, and it was not till we reached
Daraiyya itself that we actually entered the bed of the wadi, of
which, however, we obtained glimpses from time to time. The
line of Jebel Tuwaiq lay to our left front, and the rough steppe
over which we travelled is known somewhat vaguely as the
Hishat el-Daraiyya, resembling in general appearance the bare
slope of Muqharrizat which we had traversed while approaching
Riyadh from the east.
At a distance of a few miles from the capital we crossed a
depression running down into the A adi Hanifa called Abu
Mahruq, at whose confluence with the wadi stood a few small
palm groves. Beyond this we entered a ravine called Maidhar
in which to our right stood a fort and well with some signs of
cultivation around them. Ascending the stony steppe ahead of
us we obtained a last glimpse of the palms of Riyadh fiom its
summit, and soon reached a newly constructed well on the road
side in a depression at the end of which, on the edge of the
Wadi Hanifa, stood the village of Arqa (Arja) and a considerable
mass of palms. . 0 , , .
Ahead of us stood the cairn called Rijur el-baud marking
the position from which the guns of Ibrahim Pasha converted the
stately city of Daraiyya into a maze of rums to be tor ever a
prominent landmark in the troubled history of Nejd under the
dynasty rf Saud.^ ^ mjles to the north-west o£ Riyadh,
in a wide bulge o£ the Wadi Hanifa whose high rocky banks
|