"نجد الجنوبية: رحلة إلى الخرج والأفلاج والسليل ووادي الدواسر في سنة ١٩١٨." [و‎‎٨] (١٠٠/٢٠)

200 to 300 yards apart. A number of wells dotted about the
valley for about two miles beyond the last palm-grove of Hair
are collectively known as Afja. At the end of the Afja tract
the banks of the wadi rapidly decreased in height until the
valley, now choked with sand dunes here and there, spread out
to a width of half a mile or more. On the right the gentle slope
of Tuwaiq merged imperceptibly in the sand dunes, while on
the left lay a rough broken upland rising gradually to a low
ridge known as Zuwailiyat sloping down on the other side to
Wadi Sulaiy beyond which ran the Jubail ridge with its three
prominent headlands—Khashm al An, Khashm Hith and
Khashm Jubail. At a point about six and a half miles from
Hair we avoided a wide bend of the valley which had now resumed
a south-easterly direction, by following the track along the
lower slopes of the hills on the left, re-entering the wadi four
and a half miles further on and leaving it again three miles
further down to spend our midday siesta on the sand ridge of
Duwaira on the right bank. The scene in this neighbourhood
was a bewildering series of ridges converging on the valley.
The Tuwaiq plateau was now well back on the right and all
that remained of it was a series of ridges projecting from it
in the direction of the wadi while on the left bank the Jubail
ridge formed the background to a series of bumpy ridges, between
which numerous shaibs flowed down to merge in the main channel
of the wadi, now struggling through a mass of sand hills ever
growing denser.
A march of seven miles in the afternoon over monotonous
ridge and valley with the wadi running parallel on the left
brought us to the single well of Hufaira standing in a patch of
hard limestone and containing plentiful but somewhat foul
water at a depth of five fathoms. The Hanifa valley was now
about one mile broad at the point where the Wadi Sulaiy joins
it, the combined wadi being backed by a low ridge called Shadida,
which had been pointed out to us from the Turabi plain between
it and Arma during my first journey to Riyadh. For the remain
ing four miles of the day's march our course was flanked on the
right by the long low ridge of Firzan, at the end of which we
camped for the night on the threshold of Kharj, forty miles
from Riyadh.
The same evening I obtained a fine view over the whole
length and breadth of the Kharj district and eastward down the