Each bedouin has two sets of tents, a thin summer one, and a thicker one which is used during the winter; the latter is lined with a wonderful patchwork made from pieces of coloured cotton and linen, like an old-fashioned patchwork quilt. When it rains the wool of the roof swells and tightens, and the water slides off the steep sides of the tent as it does from the proverbial duck’s back. Being so low they are not torn up by the wind, and I have seen a whole camp of army tents laid flat by a hurricane which tore many of them to pieces, while the Arab ones remained standing and dry within. In appearance the Western Desert Arabs are fairer than the Arabs of Arabia and Palestine. This is probably due to the fact that when they originally took the country it was occupied by Berbers, a blue-eyed, fair-haired type, who are supposed to have crossed over from Europe into Africa at some remote period several thousand years ago. The Arabs are slightly darker than the Egyptians with features that are distinctly Semitic, expressing more intelligence than the fellahin. They are of a finer build and more wiry. Some of the Arab women are very handsome, and their costume is particularly becoming. They usually wear a long black robe with full sleeves, but on special occasions the robe is of striped silk, and a red woollen belt, several yards long, twisted round the waist like a cummerbund. Their head-dress consists of a coloured silk handkerchief tied tightly over the head, but allowing two coils of braided hair to appear on both sides of the face, then, above this, a long black scarf with a coloured fringe and a red and yellow border twisted into a high head-dress, folded like a mediæval coif below the chin, with the fringed ends hanging down behind. Soft scarlet leather boots complete the costume. Almost all the women tattoo their chins and often their foreheads with a blue pattern; this is considered by them to be very ornamental, but to European eyes it is singularly ugly. Old women dye their hair a brilliant orange colour, and men sometimes tint the tips of their beards, as well as their horses’ tails, with henna, presumably following what one sees advertised as “The henna cult of beauty.”