In winter the desert wind, due north or a little west of north, is very much colder than the usual north-north-east The mornings indeed may be quite chilly, and though this is very welcome to the Englishman the natives suffer considerably. On the first day or two of such a period the wind is strong, charged perhaps with sand, and so dry that the backs of books curl as if they had been before a fire. In the summer the alternations of climate may be astonishingly rapid, both may occur on one hot-weather day in July or August as follows. The land breeze is very weak, and dies away about 6 a.m., when already the sun is blazing hot. By 8 a.m. it is intolerable, but as it is still dead calm pearlers and fishermen are at sea making use of their opportunity. If however they expect a day of “hurûr” or hot wind they do not go far away, and when warned by two or three preliminary puffs of wind off shore, they must make all haste to return, or risk being swept out to sea. In half an hour the wind may be furiously strong, heated as by a furnace and bearing dense clouds of fine dust, of the colour and density of a London fog, together with coarser sand that stings the face. Woe to one who has to travel against such a storm! The dry heat soon produces intolerable thirst, the eyes, nose and mouth are filled with sand, while one’s face, eyelashes and even teeth are caked with mud produced by it with the natural moisture. These conditions continue until noon, when a change may be expected, but may be deferred until 4 p.m., or rarely even 6 p.m. The wind suddenly ceases, the world becomes again visible, and the temperature drops from say 105° F. to 95° F. But soon there comes the reverse wind, almost equally strong, from the sea, and the humidity increases so much that the fall of temperature is not the relief that might be expected, being but the change from oven to steam-kettle. The natives tell me that this wind, so hot in the plains, among the mountains is cold, and is heated by its passage over the sun-roasted plains. Apparently the great heat here originates miniature local cyclones, cold air from the mountain tops, or drawn over the mountains, rushing down to fill the low pressure area on the plains, being heated there and rushing on a few miles out to sea, whence the easterly return wind originates. At Dongonab these “hurûr” winds are rarer than they are further south, where they are of almost daily occurrence during the summer, while at Halaib, 100 miles further north, the natives tell me they do not occur at all. Consequently we are sometimes visited by the return wind in the morning, caused by “hurûr” at a point further down the coast. Such a cyclone is illustrated by the frontispiece, which represents the combination of thunder clouds over the mountains while a “hurûr” rages over the plain and for several miles out to sea. But among the barrier reefs, though the wind is blowing directly towards them, all is glassy calm.