We had camped on the fringe of the crowd, and thenceforth became a unit of it. Salutations acclaimed us on all sides. The _Taralum_ is renowned for its meetings of long-lost friends who travel far afield. Hausas and Tuaregs stalked smilingly into camp whom I had met a year or two ago, or back on the trail on the present journey; while my camelmen found a whole host of friends whom they knew directly or indirectly “back home.” News of all kinds was gleaned, of the south and of the outer trails, and friendliness was in the air and everyone in high spirits. After a night’s rest we settled down, like the others, to the immediate concerns of the journey ahead, and were kept busy knitting our gear to perfection of strength and compactness. Like the others, also, we had to watch our camels alertly to keep them from straying and mixing with others while shifting for ourselves in the competition for the best of grazing. To feed such an enormous caravan, even but for a brief day or two, is a tremendous consideration, and Tabello had been chosen for this very reason because it offered the best conditions to be found in a region where drear poverty of growth is the general rule. Sharp-thorned acacias, shrubs, prickly ground plants, coarse grass tussocks—all make a camel’s meal; for they will tackle most things, and they eat heavily when the chance offers. The skill with which they strip the leaves from cruel-barbed trees and plants is truly astonishing when one remembers that their lips and noses are soft as velvet and sensitive in the extreme. Acacias are the chief trees at Tabello; low, insignificant, and far removed from the tall, leafy plants that one usually associates with the name. They are nowhere in forests, and grow in an irregular line along the dry river-bed banks, or in scattered, scraggy groups in hollows where they happen to have found a bare footing. There are a number of varieties, chief of which are: _tashrar_, _tamat_, and _tigar_—thorny, squat-branched, lean and small-leafed; yet all splendid camel food. Among them, particularly where bushes grow together, is _aborer_, a densely branched tree with long green thorns and sappy wood. A choice tree to the camel is _agar_, which seeks the solitudes and often grows alone in the open. It is a pale-coloured evergreen with thick twisting branches closely covered with tiny leaves. Then there is _abisgee_, which is not an acacia. It grows, willow-like, in clumps, and is very green, and has a pungent smell not unlike skunk. Camels eat it—and, as a consequence, smell foully—but only sparingly, unless no other food offers.