A DESERT WELL of safety, and that channels should be cut across the courts, so that rain water may escape at once and not collect in pools, which undermine the foundations. In the winter of 1905-6 Mr. P. Scott Moncrieff, of the British Museum, under the direction of Mr.

J. W. Crowfoot, repaired one of the pillars at Masawwarat asSufra. In the hills on one side of the site are the remains of a large circular reservoir, from which in ancient days the natives, no doubt, obtained their water supply. We saw a great gap in the edge of it, but if this were repaired, it would again form a valuable natural cistern.

We returned to Bir a short time before sunset, and when we had pitched our tent, and made arrangements for the evening meal, there was plenty of time to go and examine the well. The approach to it on all sides is protected by layers of palm trunks covered over with a layer of lime, earth and sand, so as to form a floor ; immediately over the mouth is a square opening through which the water is drawn up. The buckets consist of squares of goat-skin tied together at the corners, and they bring up remarkably little water at a time. The well is said to be over one hundred and fifty feet deep, and a portion of its sides is lined with stones; when, and by whom, it was built is uncertain. The cords attached to the buckets are very long, and they work in.

grooves which they have cut for themselves in the palm trunks that frame the opening over the mouth of the well. I understood that a representative of each great tribe in the neighbourhood had a right to a place at the well, but that all arrangements as to the time when each man might draw water, and as to the quantity, were in the hands of the shekh of the district. When we first saw the well, in the early afternoon, every place at its mouth was occupied by fine tall, solidly built black women, and by a very few men. Some of the women were dressed in scanty strips of native cloth, and others simply wore the I'akdt, or girdle made of leather cut into strips like fringe. All were working hard, and singing and laughing loudly as they drew up the buckets, which were carried away and emptied into the shallow trough in the ground near the well. When we returned from Masawwarat we saw that a new lot of drawers of water had taken the place of the women at the well's mouth, and were told that they drew water 329