‘Gently undulating gravel plain ’, ‘ limitless expanse of rolling sand ’, ‘ succession of low sandstone ridges ’—such phrases are common in any book of desert travel, for most of the desert is featureless almost to monotony were it not that its very monotony has a charm which, for those who have felt it, no other landscape can rival. In the desert anything unusual attracts, a patch of rare shade, a hollow with a few dried bushes, a conspicuous hill,—one is drawn to each, sometimes to find the remains of some earlier and less fortunate visitor. So a 6000-foot mountain set down in the heart of one of the worst, one of the most ‘ howling ’, deserts in the world merits and receives its share of attention.