"نجد الجنوبية: رحلة إلى الخرج والأفلاج والسليل ووادي الدواسر في سنة ١٩١٨." [و‎‎١‎٥] (١٠٠/٣٤)

©
— 21
on both positive and negative evidence which seems to me
irrefutable. In the first place by no stretch of the imagination
can the Aflaj district be described as barren and savage {vide
Vol. 2, p. 76): it is fertile and civilized. In the second place
Palgrave professes to have reached Kharfa in two days from
Riyadh: no route between the two places can be less than 140
miles in length—a distance to traverse which in so short a time
would have required an effort nearly if not quite beyond the power
of man or beast ;* yet one is left to gather from his account that
he experienced no great difficulty in performing the feat. Thirdly,
the " villages " of Safra and Meshallah are fictions of Palgrave's
imagination and neither has ever had any existence in fact.
Fourthly, the oasis of Kharfa lies in a broad plain as flat as
the palm of one's hand and in no sense can the road to it be
said to lie in a " gorge of some depth " {vide Vol. 2, p. 80), the
rest of this passage being too absurd to need discussion. Fifthly,
the governor of the province does not and did not reside at
Kharfa, his seat always having been in the Laila oasis, formerly
in Mubarraz and now in Laila itself. Sixthly, Palgrave could
not possibly have visited Kharfa without seeing the other oases
scattered far and wide over the plain, yet he ignores them;
and finally, nobody resident in the Aflaj district could have told
him that Wadi Dawasir lay a " moderate day's journey south
of Kharfa " {vide Vol. 2, p. 81), nor yet that Sulaiyyil lay three
day's journey south of Bisha beyond Wadi Dawasir.
Further criticisms might be levelled at his account without
end, but the above will suffice to shew the crushing nature of the
negative evidence against the admission of his claim; the
positive evidence that he obtained his information about the
district from the lips of a casual visitor from the south, pre
sumably his friend of the unfortunate name, " Bedaa of Nejran ",
is less voluminous but no less crushingly convincing. Leaving
aside the hopelessly muddled account of the geography of the
country south of Aflaj as unworthy of detailed criticism, we may
suppose that Bedaa came up from the direction of Sulaiyyil
via Aflaj to Riyadh. Travelling more by night than by day it
would be quite possible for him to have passed by Badia without
seeing it. He would. then quite naturally group the three
contiguous oases of which Kharfa is one under the collective
* An express messenger from Ibn Saud reached me at Wadi Dawasir (300 miles from
Riyadh) in seven days, and this was considered a wonderful performance.