The first part of our journey was monotonous enough, miles and miles of weary sandy plains, with alternate stretches of agabas or stony deserts, scored with shallow depressions, where torrential rains had recently soaked into the sand, leaving a glassy, clay-like surface, which had flaked or cracked into huge fissures under the heat of the fierce sun. And at every few hundred yards we came to patches of coarse camel grass, which had evidently cropped up on the coming of the rain, and, by its present aspect, seemed to feel very sorry that it had been induced to put in an appearance, for its sustenance was now fast passing into vapor, and its green young life was rapidly dying out as the sun scorched the tender shoots to the roots. But camels thrive on this parched-up grass, and our brutes nibbled at it whenever one slackened the head-rope. We traversed the dreary plain, marked every few yards by the bleached bones of camels fallen by the way; the only living thing met with for two days being a snake of the cobra type trailing across our path. The evening of the second day we camped in a long wadi, or shallow valley, full of mimosa trees, where our camels were hobbled and allowed to graze. They delighted in nibbling the young branches of these prickly acacias, which carry thorns at least an inch in length, that serve excellently well for toothpicks. Yet camels seem to rejoice in browsing off these trees, and chew up their thorns without blinking. This I can partly understand, for the camel's usual diet of dry, coarse grass must become rather insipid, and as we sometimes take "sauce piquante" with our cold dishes, so he tickles his palate with one inch thorns. Climbing ridge after ridge of the dunes, we at last saw stretching before us in the moonlight the valley of Obak, an extensive wadi of mimosa and sunt trees. Our guides halted on a smooth stretch of sand, and I wondered why we were not resting by the wells. Near were three native women squatting round a dark object that looked to me, in the faint light of the moon, like a tray. I walked up to them, thinking they might have some grain upon it for sale, but found to my surprise that it was a hole in the sand, and I realized at once that this must be a well. One of the women was manipulating a leather bucket at the end of a rope, which after a considerable time she began hauling up to the surface. It was about half full of thick, muddy water. Further on along the wadi I now noticed other groups of natives squatting on the sand doing sentinel over the primitive wells. I never came across a more slovenly method of getting water. The mouths of the holes were not banked or protected; a rain storm or sand drift at any moment might have blocked them for a considerable period.