North-east of Zeitoun, across 90 miles of high desert tableland, one comes to the oasis of Gara, or “Um es Sogheir”—the Little Mother. The word “Um”—mother—is used indiscriminately by the Arabs in names of places, hills, valleys and rocks. According to one theory this practice originates from very ancient times when places were named after certain female deities or goddesses. Gara is a lonely valley about 10 miles long and 5 miles wide, surrounded by precipitous cliffs that one can only descend in a few places, sprinkled with vast isolated masses of rock, upon one of which the village is perched. Many of the rocks have had their bases so worn away that they look like gigantic mushrooms, and one can camp most comfortably in their shade as under an umbrella. There are nine wells and springs in the oasis, but the water has an unpleasant bitter taste, which is mentioned in the accounts of Alexander’s journey to Siwa. Owing to the bad water and lack of labour the Garites are unable to grow anything except dates of a poor quality and a few onions and tomatoes. Grapes and fruit trees will not flourish in the oasis. The people eke out a miserable existence by selling dates, mats and baskets to the caravans which pass between Siwa and Egypt. They are wretchedly poor, exceedingly dirty and very distinctly darker in complexion than the Siwans. In former days they were too weak-spirited to be aggressive and too poor to be attacked, although owing to the position of Gara on the Siwa-Egypt caravan route they might easily have made themselves very awkward to travellers by levying a toll on convoys calling at Gara for water on their way to Egypt. [Illustration: THE SPRING OF ZEITOUN] But on the one solitary occasion when the Garites did attempt to do this they fared very badly. According to the tradition a famous religious sheikh called Abdel Sayed was travelling from Tripoli to join the pilgrim caravan at Cairo. He had with him a few attendants and some devout men who were also on their way to do the Pilgrimage. When they halted at Gara the inhabitants, instead of feeling honoured and entertaining the travellers, came out of the town and attacked them. The sheikh and his followers managed to escape, and when they were safely out of the valley the venerable Abdel Sayed stood on a rock and solemnly cursed the people of Gara, swearing that there should never be more than forty men alive in the village at once. Since then, although the total number of inhabitants is over a hundred, there have never been more than forty full-grown men. When the number exceeds forty, one of them dies. On this account the Garites have a great objection to strangers, and when I arrived, with a dozen fully grown Camel Corps men, the sheikh anxiously begged me to forbid them to enter the village, but as there were under forty men living there at the time I myself and an orderly went up into the town. Presumably if we had all walked up several of the Garites must have died.