'Southern Nejd: Journey to Kharj, Aflaj, Sulaiyyil, and Wadi Dawasir in 1918.' [‎14r] (32/100)

— 19 —
We camped for the night about one mile above the exit of
the Ajaimi under the great headland of Khashm al Khartam,
towering some 500 feet above the level of the plateau, and the
following morning with Kharj well behind us we set our course
for the Aflaj. Now cutting across the plateau to avoid wide
bends of the channel and now along the bed of the Ajaimi
itself, dotted here and there with pools of refreshing water left
by the floods of the past season, we steered south-west for about
seventeen miles to a more or less permanent pool of water
called Ghadir Halfawi, near which we camped for the night.
At this point, some 1,950 feet above sea-level, the Ajaimi, whose
source is not far off to the west in some low hills standing out
from the Tuwaiq, is joined by an important affluent called
Shaib Halfawi draining the western slopes of the Biyadh and
having its source near a headland called Khashm al Mishash,
below which lie the rough wells of Mishash al Niswan, from
which it flows round in a wide semi-circle into line with the
Ajaimi.
It is actually into the Halfawi in the first instance that flow
the important drainage channels of Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. Birk, Shaib Tilha,
and Shaib Ahmara whose extremities we crossed the following
day in the first four and a half miles of our march in the order
given above. From the confluence of the last-named Shaib
with the Halfawi we struck south-west across a bare level stretch
of sandy loam for nine miles to the southern boundary of the
plateau marked by a broad expanse of gentle undulating bare
stony downs called Insalah, the extremities of which impinge
on the Tuwaiq and Biyadh uplands on either side. Through
these downs, whose general level is 2,200 feet above the sea,
a number of unimportant streams, the last southern affluents of
the Sahaba system, run down into the Halfawi at some distance
eastward of the point where we left it.
Our onward course now lay along a well-beaten track SSW.
through the Insalah downs, in times long past a scene of constant
conflict between the various tribes—Dawasir, Al Murrah, Qahtan,
and Ateiba—but now thanks to the firm rule of Ibn Sand remark
able for the security even of solitary travellers : seven miles
further on the road climbs a low ridge on to another plateau
(3,400 feet above sea-level) called Dhaharat al Eajd from an
immense cairn erected on the road at the top of the ridge. The .
Rajd plateau, whose northern fringe forms the watershed between