"نجد الجنوبية: رحلة إلى الخرج والأفلاج والسليل ووادي الدواسر في سنة ١٩١٨." [و‎‎٧] (١٠٠/١٨)

and locusts. It is even related of those times that the news of
the birth of a son to a notable of Ayaina reached Yamama the
same evening passed on by word of mouth from housetop to
housetop down the valley. The legend of the past glory and
destruction of the valley is vague enough and the absence of
extensive remains in that part of it, which lies between Riyadh
and Kharj .• makes one sceptical unless the true explanation be
that the havoc was caused by one of those sudden visitations
of terrific flood which, there can be little doubt, descend at
rare intervals on this part or that of the Arabian peninsula.
Such a catastrophe alone could have swept away all signs of
such prosperity as the valley is reputed to have enjoyed. In
more recent times Jiza was utterly destroyed by the invading
army of Ibrahim Pasha and still more recently was the scene
of a furious conflict between the sons whom Feisal left to wrangle
for his throne.
For the next two and a half miles we marched now on the
right and now on the left bank of the wadi, henceforth a single
stream, until we reached a considerable widening of the valley
caused by the confluence therewith of the Shaib Dakina from
the low hills on the left and the Shaib Baqra from the Tuwaiq
plateau on the right. At the junction of the former with the
wadi are a number of qasrs and wells standing amid extensive
cornfields cultivated by tribesmen of the Suhul and Subai,
who range from the Arma plateau in the neighbourhood of
Shaib Shauki and Hafar al Atsh on the east (extending for
grazing to the Dahana and Summan beyond) to the Wadi
Hanifa on the west from Dakina to Hair inclusive. Ibn Saud
has recently tried without success to form an Akhwan colony here.
Resting for a while on the banks of the Baqra we continued
our march in the afternoon and, one and a half miles further
on, found the slopes on either side closing in on the wadi, which
from this point runs down in a narrow bed between deeply
eroded banks rapidly increasing in height. We kept to the
road which, avoiding the bends of the tortuous channel, strikes
across the slope on its left bank for about two miles when it
drops by a steep rock path into a little Shaib called Hifna and
re-enters the wadi almost immediately.
From this point we marched along the wadi bed, varying
from thirty to 100 yards in breadth between imposing weather
worn crags from fifty to 100 feet high and in parts covered with