Poor Saïd! The wear and tear of the last month had worn him a bit. Fever had paled his skin, and left him thinner than he was when he had started from Aden; but no weariness, no fever, had caused him to pay less attention to his personal charms than before, and his curly locks were as soft and silky and glossy as ever, although his loin-cloth and sash told tales of travel. Still, in all our hardships he had been ever bright and gay, and as we neared civilisation once more, and there seemed some chance of his seeing his paradise—Aden—again, his eyes regained their former twinkle, and his laugh grew more cheery than ever. With Abdurrahman it was different, and the strain and exertion he had been through had told on his more delicate constitution. Brought up in the bracing mountains of Morocco, where frosts are common, and even in the daytime the heat is never oppressive, he had felt severely the sudden changes of the tropics. All his gaiety had left him, and he scarcely spoke. It was with difficulty that we could rouse his spirits, try hard as we did, Saïd and I. Almost every evening, in spite of arsenic and quinine, fever would seize him, and he would lie awake of a night, tossing and moaning in a way that was pitiful to see and hear. Leaving Wisil, the road descends, by a zigzag track, the steep mountain-side. Here were apparent one at least of the advantages of the Turkish occupation of the Yemen, for the road was wide and in good repair, supported by a stone embankment, and planted on either side with mimosa-trees, which no doubt help in some degree to prevent the floods which the heavy rainfalls occasion from washing the stones away, and which will eventually prove no small advantage to the traveller by their shade. At length the bed of the water-course was reached, down which the road proceeds, roughly and unpleasantly, over great boulders and stones that tired our poor little mules, and necessitated our proceeding on foot. Thick vegetation, principally trees of the mimosa type, fringe the edge of the river-bed, which, except for an occasional pool or spring, contained no water.