When we had crossed the frontier between Bisheren and Hadendowah country we were in comparative safety regarding any molestation by the natives, for we were escorted by the son of the sheikh of one of the subtribes of the latter country. At all events, I must have been a sore temptation for any evil disposed Fuzzy Wuzzy; for, owing to my camel being badly galled by an ill-fitting saddle, I would find myself for many hours entirely alone picking my way by the light of the moon, the poor brute I was riding not being able to keep pace with the rest. All the following day our route lay over stony plains of a bolder type than any we had yet seen, and when in the heart of the Hadendowah Hills we came suddenly upon a scene in its weirdness the most extraordinary and most appallingly grand I had ever seen. A huge wilderness lay before us like the dry bed of a vast ocean, whose waters by some subterranean convulsion had been sucked into the bowels of the earth, leaving in its whirling eddies the debris of submarine mountains heaped up in rugged confusion or scattered over its sandy bottom. Porphyry and black granite bowlders, in every conceivable form and size, lay strewn over the plain. Sometimes so fantastic did their shapes become that the least imaginative of our party could picture the gigantic ruins of some mighty citadel, with its ramparts, bastions and towering castle. For many hours we were traversing this weird and desolate valley, and when the sun cast long shadows across our track as he sank to rest, his ruddy light falling upon the dark bowlders, polished with the sand storms of thousands of years, stray pieces of red granite would catch his rosy glint, and sparkle like giant rubies in a setting of black pearls. We found more life in ten miles of the Hadendowah country than during the whole of the first part of our journey. Flocks of sheep, goats and oxen passed us coming to the wells, or going to some pasturage up in the hills, but few natives came near us, and there were no signs of habitation anywhere. The wells we now passed were mere water holes similar to those met with up country in Australia. The flocks of the natives would hurry down at eventide and drink up all the water that had percolated through the sand during the day, befouling the pools in every conceivable way. Natives seem to revel in water contaminated by all kind of horrors. They wash the sore backs of their camels, bathe their sheep and drink from the same pool. At one large hole round which a number of natives were filling their girbas we halted, and procured some of the liquid, which was muddy and tepid, but wholesomer. A native caravan had camped near by and the Hadendowah escort of spearmen crowded round us.