Returning to the _café_ where I had put up, I found the camels ready to start, so mounting once more, we set out. Leaving the town behind us, the way took us for the first few miles through rich cultivated land, watered by a careful system of irrigation, and gorgeous in its verdure. Emerging from the fields, we struck into wilder country, torn up into great ravines by the Wadi Lahej—a river that, in the dry season, is but a tiny stream, but after rains a series of vast torrents, its many channels becoming filled with the huge mass of water, often carrying away much of the cultivated land, and doing no little damage. Sometimes the trunks of big trees from the far interior are carried over the desert—where at ordinary times the sand absorbs the water to such an extent that it never reaches the sea—and cast into the bay at Aden. From this it can be judged how severe are the rainfalls when such comparatively rare occurrences do take place. The river which I mention here under the name of the Wadi Lahej is also known by the name of the Mobarat. It has two channels to the sea, but, as already stated, is at most seasons exhausted by the desert sands of the low-lying coast country. The principal channel is the Wadi el-Kebir, or great river, which flows out near Hashma, a small village in the Bay of Aden, the other being the Wadi es-Seghir, or small river, which empties itself into the Ghubbat Seilan, a bay to the north-east of Aden, and formed by the peninsula itself and by Ras Seilan, a point some thirty miles along the coast. Wild and depressing the scene was. Ahead of us, almost as far as the eye could reach, stretched the desert, unbroken by even a single bush, and gradually sloping up to broken rocky peaks, which glowed a dull leaden crimson under the rays of the setting sun. We were leaving the oasis behind now, and no longer the peasants returning from the fields stood to gaze on us as we passed by; no longer their wild songs rang in our ears—songs sung by the sons of the desert and echoed by its daughters, as, hoe in hand, or leading the flocks and herds, they wandered back to the town. Now it was only occasionally that a warrior with spear passed us, on foot or on camel-back. Then night fell,—night such as we had experienced on the previous march, and which I have so dismally failed to describe,—night which fails all description. But we went on, the camels patiently plodding their way. It was eleven o’clock before we halted and spread our carpet under a clump of thorny trees, close to the river-bed, which we had been following since our departure from Howta. Here we rested for a few hours, our fire twinkling and flickering and bursting into little flames as we threw the thorny twigs upon it, for the night was chilly and a heavy dew falling.