Saturday, 19th February. Thermometer 1°.—Having filled water for five days, we set out over black stony hills, bounded to the north-westward at the distance of a mile from our track by a sandy desert. At nine, a hillock of a singular form, resembling a turret, and called Amaymet Saad, bore north 52° east. As it stands at the entrance of a pass we were to ascend, we proceeded towards it; a strong east wind blowing very sharply. We met a man on his way from Sockna, who informed us that the Consul had been at Benioleed. The Negresses had, from the time of our setting off, been collecting wood, and the poor creatures were each laden with stock for two days. We passed a grave, which was ornamented by an inverted gourd at the head. The person buried there was a drunken man, a native of Sockna, who had been in the habit of carrying letters or orders across the desert, whenever the Sultan required it, and was able to pass it on foot in three days, at about forty miles a day. It once happened that a letter was to be brought from Sockna to Zeghen, and this man was selected for the purpose; he was drunk at the time, yet insisted on having his gourd full of Lackbi, instead of carrying, as usual, a small skin of water at his back, promising, however, to drink enough at Gutfa, a well at the foot of the mountains. He set out in this condition, and was found dead with his empty gourd by his side, within an hour’s walk of the well we had left, and so finished his task; he was accordingly buried here, as a warning to all topers. At 12.6. P.M. came to the sand, and passed over it until 1.30. when we reached very steep, irregular sand hills, which we found great difficulty in ascending, the camels falling repeatedly. Having cleared these hills, we ascended a plain by a pass called Kenaire كنير, to the eastward of which, at the distance of a mile, is the turret I have already mentioned. Through the sand hills, I observed a singular line of rocks, resembling the scoria of the lava of Vesuvius, and about ten feet in breadth, running north and south for about five hundred yards. The mountains over Om el Abeed, which we had just left, run east and west, until lost in the distance. The hills we ascended were of limestone and flint, very precipitous, and facing to the southward, running east-south-east and west-north-west. The plain was covered with a white crust or clay, with here and there bare rock intervening. At 3.40. P.M. we passed over a few sand hills, called El Ramle Shraiya, or the small sands. At 4.15. came to a black stony flat. 4.45. passed a long line of stones facing the east, called “Sala el Sultan, or the praying place of the Sultan;” a former Sultan having prayed here while passing the desert with a numerous army. At 6.30. arrived at a spot called Gheranfāta, which is generally a resting-place, and is marked by two or three basaltic heaps: we had advanced to the pass, north 45° east, twelve miles, and from it north 52° east, the same distance.