Page 6 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 6 -10
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PHYSICAL CHARACTER 181
the natives as the Kaur, or highland, with various local
A,n°ps attached, such as Kaur el-‘Audillah, El-Od (or El-‘Aud), Edth,
'*iim It is well watered, but the maritime scarps are comparatively
♦ rile and much steeper than the internal slopes. Unlike the Yemen
I vhlands, the Kaur is thinly populated by semi-nomadic, pastoral
tribes and is poorly cultivated. .
(5) Inland of this ridge the ground gradually descends in a
Hories of terraces to large well-watered plateaux lying at an average
altitude of 5,000 ft., where are most of the mountain settlements
and extensive cultivated tracts. The plateaux are intersected
by many subsidiary ranges of foot-hills running down from the
ridge, and they decline gradually towards the north and north-
cast, the fertile and broken terrain opening out by degrees into
broad and comparatively sterile tracts, which merge into the rolling
sands of the Ruba‘ el-Khali.
(6) The great inland desert has a mean altitude of 3,500 ft. along
its southern margin, while occasional isolated ranges, far out in the
desert, probably rise to 5,000 ft. ; this is as much as human know
ledge can say at present about the Ruba‘ el-Khali. •
The innumerable wadis, deep and precipitous in their upper
reaches in the plateaux but shallower and broader as they cross
the plain, by which this region as a whole is intersected, run
mostly in a southerly direction. As in other parts of South-West
Arabia, all are dry during the greater part of the year, but water
courses come down in violent spate when heavy rain has fallen
in the hills, and then some of the larger ones reach the sea. Of
these wadis the most important (enumerating from west to east)
are Tarbaha, Timnan, Am Shahar, Darr, the Tiban which bifurcates
north of Lahej and waters that oasis with its two branches Wadi
Keblr and Wadi Saghir, the Bana, some 40 miles east of Aden,
which in time of flood cuts its way through the sand-bar at its
rciouth to the sea, Wadi Hasan, fed by W§di Yeramis, and Wadi
th (-^war), fed by Wadis Jahr (Gahr) and Leikah. North of
he Kaur the country is drained by Wadis Beihan, Khalla, Surum,
t haura, Na‘man (or Na'mah), Khatib, and ‘Abdan, all of which have
ij|°re or less direct northerly courses, and sooner or later merge
(Ah -f unexpl°red Wadi Markhah which loses itself in the Safi (or
rarrVfi )' • -^e 'Tiban calls for special mention as, with its complex
Yern Ca^°na’ ^ forms the main artery of communication with the
Suds!!1' ?Lits innumerable branches, the ‘Aqqan, Warazan,
on ^ndTlsan (or Qaisan) on the r. bank, and Bilih and Tabaghain
thouok i’ *re the chief- The stream of the Tiban is perennial
gn snort waterless stretches of river-bed will be met with, during
