We spent the day quietly under the little shade the scanty trees gave. A couple of the men went to the village to buy provisions, and returned with a bowl of rancid butter, bread of a thin consistency that would have served any purpose other than edible, from boot-soles to wrapping up parcels in, and a goat whose age was unfathomable. However, one cannot be too particular when travelling in such countries as the Yemen. [Illustration: VIEW OF AZAB.] At sunset our mules were packed, and we set off once more, creeping out of the nullah so as not to be seen from the village above, the inhabitants of which would be only too likely to take advantage of our position to go shares in my belongings—probably forgetting to give me my portion, unless they did so with one of their curved daggers. The last glow of daylight still hovered in the sky; the last rays of the setting sun still tinged with pink and purple and gold the huge jagged peaks of the mountains before us. Very grand it is, this range of limestone, torn into all manner of fantastic shapes, the peaks here resembling some bewitched feudal castle, there the tapering spire of a cathedral. The track was as rough as usual, and constant short ascents and descents rendered our progress very slow. When darkness was complete, except for the glimmer of the stars, our men called a halt, and ranging themselves in line upon the soft white sand of a stream-bed, cried “Allah Akbar,” and rose and fell with monotonous motion in prayer. Wild shadows they appeared in their nudeness and shaggy locks,—wild shadows that some fevered brain might imagine; but the odour of the rancid butter and oil on their hair proved their reality. No decent ghost would smell as they did. Enjoining silence on every one, the men lit the fuses of their guns, and a couple going ahead to keep a sharp look-out, we pushed on. Like the glow of cigarette-ends, I could follow the spark of their guns as they crept along.