File 756/1917 Pt 1 ‘ARAB BULLETIN Nos 1 to 65’ [‎457v] (919/1240)

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, n . fv feet deep, and fitted with a new but
but only a large ^el, fr0 m Wejh). Thereafter a low
useless iron P um P 3 k turns sout h-east into Wadi A seasonal or intermittent watercourse, or the valley in which it flows. Jedeir,
rocky col is passed a . ins ^ a di Ghulal, flowing into the
which is desc ^ d h e crohio'^down to the latter, the way ascends
Hamdh; but witho g r^ j^atta, where are trees and
y High massifs Erbut es-Said on the north and Gom.r
^“ h ’. ri |r^iti Xh runs down"" tdi
lXd 18 "^efas M rutb,000 yards w^e. By this
IS’ t^o-and-a-half 1 miles wide, ^/^^‘'miTes"^^
Khautkh)’"' The P great valley “ now ascended''for about twenty
miles, and then the pilgrim track continuing up the wad,
diverges to right from the line which Bimbashi Gar and had
to take to reach his objective, Toweira He has, therefore, seen
only the first 106 miles or so of this Daib es-Sultam, on
which he found no permanent settlement whatever after
leaving Wejh.
The rest of his route lay across country, the W 7 adis Safrah
and Jizal being crossed in succession and W adi Llgat, a tributary
of the latter (which is itself a right bank affluent of the Hamdh),
being ascended to the point where the railway has to cioss it, a
little south of Toweira station, the distance acioss country, aftei
W T adi Hamdh was finally left, Bimbashi Garland gives as about
forty miles. In W adi Jizal he met with three good wells, but he
found the country increasingly bare of vegetation as he proceeded.
His whole march reckoned by camel-pace (three-and-a-half miles
an hour), was 153£ miles, and he thinks that the Hejaz railway
at Toweira must be some twenty miles (crowfly) nearer the
coast than our maps place it.
Defences of the Line.
Bimbashi Garland further reports as follows :—
It seems that the Turks have a system of blockhouses along
the line now, something like a mile apart. There was no barbed
wire on the line. The two posts were not more than 1,500 yards
apart, and he was told that at Toweira a company is stationed.
Natives of the district say the line is patrolled by troops mounted
on camels and mules ; also, first thing every morning, a trolley
with twenty men runs from station to station to inspect. It was
also reported that the system for catching raiding parties is as
follows : Mounted troops start from the station on each side of
the section attacked, the northerly detachment proceeding SW.
and the southerly N.W., hoping thus to hold the raiding party
in the resulting triangular area.
1 his is the first time that the Turks have had a train
wrecked, and it is to be supposed that they will now have to
search the line thoroughly every day for mines, and that they
will hardly dare to run trains at night in the future.