and the dead branches on the gaunt palm trunks sway like corpses on a gallows tree. When I trekked in these parts I always tried to camp for the night above the cliffs, but this was no easy matter, as in places they rose perpendicularly from the ground. Yet the presence of innumerable sepulchral chambers cut in the cliffs shows that these melancholy valleys were once inhabited. The water here is practically undrinkable. At Gagub there is a well, and on one occasion my men all drank from it, but it was so strongly impregnated with sulphur that it had the same effect as a very powerful dose of physic! There is a great difference between these deep gloomy valleys, with their oozing marshes and dead funereal palm trees, and Siwa itself, with its rich gardens, cool defiles and long green vistas among the trees. From the top of a hill near Melfa, the westernmost oasis, one can see the dome of the mosque at Jerabub. In Siwa the mosques have no domes, so one becomes unaccustomed to the sight of them, and for this reason the dome at Jerabub looks quite impressive, though it is actually only about the size of those that one sees over tombs in numbers of the cemeteries of Cairo. Jerabub used to be the Mecca of Senussiism, but what glory it ever had has now passed away. To-day it only contains about a hundred half-starving natives, and a few old sheikhs who still teach the children in the zowia (religious school). Lately the people were in such sore straits that the Senussi Wakil, Sidi Ahmed, had to send down a convoy of grain from the coast, and the Siwans who rode into Jerabub to sell things returned with their goods and complained that nobody had any money to spend. The dates in the Jerabub gardens are very inferior, so the Siwans export quite a lot of dates to their neighbours. The only man of any wealth in Jerabub was an old retired merchant called Mohammed el Ithneini. He was so old, and so enormously fat, that he was unable to walk, and had to be carried about by his slaves in a litter. In his day he had been a great merchant, travelling between Tripoli, Wadai, Egypt and the Sudan, and in course of time he had amassed considerable riches. But lately, finding himself short of cash, with a large family to support, he began to raise money on his belongings.