The village is a miserable imitation of Aghourmi, but dirty and squalid. A steep winding pathway leads up the rock to the gateway, and in the centre there is a square open market where nothing is ever bought or sold as nobody has any money except the sheikh, and he spends it at Siwa when he rides in every fortnight on a donkey to report at the Markaz. The sheikh himself is an intelligent man, but scarcely able to speak any Arabic. One of his duties is to look after the telephone from Siwa which passes Gara on its way to Matruh. This telephone was erected by the army after the Senussi operations, and is remarkably clear considering the distance of desert which it crosses. My visit caused a great sensation, as the people had not seen an Englishman for a very long time. The inhabitants came out to my camp and sat in silent rows gazing at us, until they were politely “moved on,” and the women spent the whole day looking down on us from the roofs. I believe, during the war, a car patrol visited the place, but as the sheikh said, “They came—whirrrr—and they went—brrrrr!” According to another legend some bedouin raiders once attacked Gara. The people retired to the village, shut the gates, and prayed to the patron sheikh, who is buried outside, for help. The spirit of the dead sheikh rose to the occasion and so dazzled the eyes of the enemy that they wandered round and round the rock and were totally incapable of finding the gate. Eventually they became so exhausted that the Garites were emboldened to come down from the town and kill them. The old muezzin of the mosque of Gara related this story to me, and an audience of Garites, who evidently knew it well, with what I considered unjustifiable pride, and he did not seem to think at all that his forebears had played rather a cowardly part in this signal victory. Between Siwa and Gara there is a pass through a rocky gorge called Negb el Mejberry. Across the track there is a line of fifty little heaps of stones, each a few feet high. Once, many years ago, a rich caravan set out from Siwa to the coast, via Gara. They reached the negb (pass) at twilight and noticed the heaps of stones, but thought nothing of it. Suddenly, when they were quite close to them, a bedouin leaped up from behind each heap and rushed on the caravan. With great difficulty the merchants beat off the robbers, and the ambuscade failed, but not without several men being killed. The merchants buried them close to the place, which is haunted to-day by the ghosts of the brigands who still appear lurking behind the stone heaps. The pass has an evil reputation, and natives prefer to cross it in broad daylight, and not when the sinking sun plays strange tricks with the shadows of the rocks, or when the moon lends an air of mystery to the rugged ravine.