Many were the miseries that attended this encampment. The rattling of arms was heard on every side, for the soldiers were shivering to such a degree that they could not hold their guns steadily. What would they not now have given for some of the wood they had so wantonly destroyed in the forests of the Tell! But the bivouac was not even supplied with chiah--one of the commonest plants in Sahara, having a ligneous root, which had hitherto served us for fuel when everything else failed. Nothing was to be found but halfa, green, and steeped in snow; and the most skilful kindlers succeeded only in amusing themselves for a time with poor, little fires, that emitted more smoke than flame. The men, of course, could not make their soup; but the general ordered them rations of biscuit and coffee. For my own part, not being able to make a fire of wet halfa, I was looking disconsolately at a bit of biscuit, and a little morsel of cheese, which was to compose my dinner, when Lieutenant N---- sent word that his fire-makers had been more successful, and that they offered me a corner. In a few minutes, I sat down to two boiled eggs, which appeared delicious. Meanwhile, the night drew on. The soldier's bed out-of-doors is a sheepskin laid on the bare ground, under a tent so small that he cannot stand upright in it. Now, as the earth was very damp, those who did not take the precaution of choosing a little mound, and removing a portion of the wet soil, soon found themselves literally in the mud, and were obliged to get up, and walk about all night. The snow continued to fall thick and fast, the thermometer marking 7 degrees below the freezing-point during the night. Some days before, it had been 125 degrees Fahrenheit in the sun; so that we were doomed, as in the Purgatory of Dante-- A sofferir tormenti caldi e geli; from which, by the way, Milton has obviously borrowed his idea of infernal torment: ---- And feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce, From beds of raging fire, to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immovable, infixed, and frozen round, Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.