Finally, after other days of great heat, which were the last of that summer, the 28th of August, the Aarab removed from el-Héjr. Once more their “faces were toward” the Teyma country, and I mounted among them with such comfort of heart as is in the going home from a scurvy school-house;—delivered, at length, from the eye-sore and nose-sore of those mawkish mummy-house cliffs, the sordid kella and perilous Moghrâreba of Medáin Sâlih. Now, leaving the Turkish haj-road country, I had Nejd before me, the free High Arabia!

We passed the enclosed plain to the south-eastward. I saw many falcons carried out by the thel^l riders in this ráhla; they had purchased the birds of the gate Arabs; and there are Beduin masters who in the march carry their greyhounds upon camel-back, lest the burning sand should scald their tender feet. Four days we journeyed by short marches to the eastward, and the nomads alighting every forenoon dismissed their cattle to pasture. The summer heat was ended for us in those airy uplands. At the morrow's sunrise whilst we sat a moment, before the rálila, over a hasty fire, I read the thermometer, 73° F.; yet it seemed a cold wind that was blowing upon us.