The rain that causes this transformation falls occasionally during the winter months from November till about March. During this time there are clouds in the sky, and sometimes terrific downpours. The Arabs greet the first rain of the season with great delight, the men sing and shout, and the women raise piercing shrieks to show their pleasure. Unless there is a good rainfall none of the barley grows, and the grazing on which the sheep and camels depend is insufficient. When it rains the wadis become rushing torrents, roads are impassable, every house leaks, and many of the roofs subside. The camels have to be led from their flooded lines to the higher ground where they stand shivering. Camels hate rain. If one is out on trek and a really stiff shower comes on the camels barrack down, with their backs towards the direction of the rain, and nothing will make them budge till it is over. One just has to wait till it stops. If the track is muddy and wet the camels slither and slide and one must dismount and lead them; they were made for hot, dry countries, not for a damp, wet climate. Hardly any of the houses at Matruh or Sollum are watertight, and it was nothing out of the ordinary when one called on a man to find him camped out in the middle of his most watertight room, surrounded by his perishable belongings, with a sort of canopy consisting of a waterproof sheet and a mackintosh or two stretched out above him. But though rain storms were very violent they did not last long, and the sun soon came out and dried everything up again. When, however, one was caught by a bad storm out on trek on the desert, with only a thin tent, and no change of clothes, it was very disagreeable. The word “house” is misleading. People imagine at least a large comfortable bungalow. But on the Western Desert the average house occupied by an English official, with possibly a wife, was a three-roomed stone hut, with plastered walls and a wooden roof, with a very thin layer of cement. The largest room would be about twelve feet square, the plaster invariably crumbled off the walls owing to the salt in it, and the cement invariably cracked in the summer so that the rain poured through the roof in the winter. Cement for some reason was almost impossible to get. One always heard that for “next year” the Administration had included the building of real houses for its officials in the Budget, but this item was always one of the first to be struck out on the grounds of economy. Nobody has yet discovered an ideal roofing for the Western Desert, where there are extremes of heat and cold and occasional terrific hurricanes and downpours. So far, the best type of abode seems to be the bedouin tent.