"نجد الجنوبية: رحلة إلى الخرج والأفلاج والسليل ووادي الدواسر في سنة ١٩١٨." [و‎‎٣‎٦] (١٠٠/٧٦)

— 63 —
the WNW.—a scene which I was destined to behold once more
from another point and which serves to fill in the gap between
my present route and that of my Taif journey.
We now turned north-west down the course of Shaib Kiriz,
the Batin al Hamar of the Aflaj plain, and camped in its bed
about one and a half miles from Khashm Khartam at the south
western corner of a narrow oblong strip of plateau lying south
west by north-east and hemmed in between the rim of Tuwaiq
along the north-west flank, the hillock tract at the south-west
end, the northern flank of the Khartam tableland to south-east
and a similar escarpment along the north-east side ending
practically on the rim of Tuwaiq ; at the south-eastern corner
of this oblong lay Hamar while much of the central space was
occupied with low hill masses, the slope of the whole being
towards the south-eastern corner where the Kiriz runs through
the oasis of Hamar into the gorge which conducts it to
the plain.
The oasis of Hamar, about 2,600 feet above sea-level and
145 miles by our route from the wadi is generally acknowledged
to be the premier settlement of the Aflaj hill tract; it comprises
a palm-belt about one and a half miles long and half a mile
across at its broadest point lying on both banks of the Kiriz
from the head of the gorge upwards ; its wells varying according
to situation and season from six to thirteen fathoms in depth
are numerous ; its groves are on the whole dense and full of a
rich undergrowth including the pomegranate which we now saw
again for the first time since leaving Badia on the outward
journey; extensive patches of cornfields lie here and there
between the palm-groves and to the north of the oasis up the
channel of a tributary of the Kiriz called Dhaman which runs
down from and along the escarpment enclosing the plateau on
the north-east; and finally at about the middle of the oasis
on the left bank of the Sufasha, another tributary of the Kiriz
coming down from the low hills in the central portion of the
plateau, lies a small hamlet which with some twenty qasrs
scattered Up and down the Kiriz accommodates a population
of some 500 souls. About one and a half miles downstream
of the oasis in the gorge lie the ruins of two small hamlets of
Muwaisil in a fairly thick grove of tamarisks ; about the same
distance upstream on the banks of the Kiriz are a few abandoned
wells and qasrs known as Umm Shajara; and about ten or