I return to our fifth day in the desert, on which we set forth early, about eight o’clock, from the little valley E’ Sufr, where we had pitched our tent under some gum or sont-trees, and arrived at half-past twelve, after we had left the road about half an hour, and turned to the left into a wide valley, at the brackish wells of Wadi Murhad. Here we had concluded about half of our journey; we saw a few huts built of small stones and sedge, near which a couple of thin goats sought fruitlessly for some food; our black host led us into an arbour of bulrushes, where we made ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would permit. In this valley we had for some time observed the snow-white surface of the natron on the sand, which makes the water in the valley brackish. Toward the end of the valley, where it divides into two branches, there are the standing waters, five or six feet below the surface, which have been dug out into eight wells. The furthest wells have a greenish, salt, and ill-tasting water, which, however, serves the camels very well; the three front ones, however, have brighter water, which we could have drunk very well, if it had been necessary. This is a government station usually occupied by six people; at this time four were on an excursion and only two in the place. Two ways led hence to Korusko, a western and an eastern one; Ibrahim Aga had unfortunately chosen the former, by which we had missed him, having ourselves taken the latter. Sheikh Ahmed was not to be found here; probably he had only reached our camels on the second day, and we were therefore obliged to proceed without him. The Abâbde Arabs, with whom we had now everywhere to do, are a true and trustworthy people, from whom one has less to fear than from the cunning thievish Fellahs of Egypt. To the north-east of them are the Bishari tribes, who speak a peculiar language, and are now at bitter feud with the Abâbde, because they waylaid and murdered some Turkish soldiers two years ago in the little valley, where we stayed the night, and for which Hassan Chalif, the superior sheikh of the Abâbde, to whose care the highway between Berber and Korusko is committed, had nearly forty of the Bishari executed. With the aid of the Abâbde, too, Ismael Pasha had been able four-and-twenty years before to bring his army though the desert and seize the Sudan. Guides are only posted by government along the road by which we were coming, but not on the longer but better watered line from Berber to Assuan, which is now little used.