By day the caravan road cannot easily be missed, even when the sand has destroyed every trace of it; it is marked by numberless camels’ skeletons, of which several are always in sight; I counted forty-one within the last half-hour before sunset, on the previous day. Of our camels, however, although they had not long rested in Korusko, and got scarcely anything to eat or drink on the way, none were lost. Mine, in whose mouth I had occasionally put a bit of biscuit, used to stretch back his long neck in the middle of the march, until it laid its head with its large tender eyes in my lap, in order to get some more. We halted at about four o’clock in the afternoon for two hours, and then proceeded till eleven, when we pitched our camp in the great plain. The wind, however, was so violent, that it was impossible to fasten up our tents. Notwithstanding the ten iron rings which are prepared for keeping it up, it fell three times before it was quite finished; we, therefore, let it lie, laid our own selves down behind a little wall, that the guide had constructed of camel saddles as a shelter, and slept _à la belle étoile_. On the eighth day we might have arrived at Abu Hammed late in the evening, but we resolved to stay the night at an hour’s distance from that place, that we might reach the Nile by day. The birds of prey increased in the neighbourhood of the river; we scared away thirty vultures from the fresh carcase of a camel; the day before I had shot a white eagle, and some desert partridges, which were seeking _durra_ grains on the caravan road. We only saw traces of wild beasts by the carcases; they did not trouble us at night, as in the camp at Korusko, where we had shot a hyæna, and several jackals. In the afternoon we met a slave caravan. The last encampment before reaching Abu Hammed was less windy, but our coals were exhausted, and the servants had forgotten to gather camel’s dung for the fire; therefore we were obliged to drink the last brown skin-water without boiling it, to quench our thirst. The donkeys could not be spared any of it.