We saw several gazelle in the afternoon, but all too far away for a shot. Halted for the night at a place where there were about four small tufts of vegetation. The camels are less fastidious now and condescended to nibble at them. The best time of the day is the evening when the sun sinks low, the desert becomes a pinkish colour, and our shadows stretch like huge monsters for yards across the ground. Then I begin to look out for a camping place, anywhere where there are a few scraps of dried-up vegetation, or, failing that, a soft-looking patch of ground where the camels will be comfortable. When we halt the baggage is unloaded and the camels are allowed to roam about and eat what they can find; in five minutes my tent is pitched, chair and table unfolded, and dinner is being prepared. Some of the men begin measuring out the camels’ dhurra—millet—and others go and collect bits of stick for the fires, or if there is no wood they use dry camel dung, which is an excellent fuel. Then the camels are driven in again, unsaddled and tied down in a long line; at a given signal the men run along the line and place each one’s food on a sack in front of its nose. Every man squats down by his own camel and watches it eat, preventing the ones who eat fast from snatching at their neighbour’s grain. Afterwards the men have their own supper—lentils, onions, bread and tea, and soon roll themselves up in their blankets, covering face and all, and go to sleep behind their saddles, which they use as shelters against the night wind. The only sound is the munching of the camels and an occasional hollow gurgle as they chew the cud, and the footsteps of the sentry as he moves up and down the line, “till the dawn comes in with golden sandals.” Abdel Aziz is improving; he produced quite a decent dinner—sausages, fried onions and potatoes, omelette and coffee, followed by a cigar. One sleeps splendidly on the desert. Even in the hottest weather the nights are fairly cool. Towards morning, just before the “false dawn,” a little cool breeze blows over the sand and stirs the flaps of one’s tent, like a sort of warning that soon it will be time to get on the move again. _27th._ We marched for six hours in the morning and about four hours in the afternoon, and camped for the night at the half-way point between Sollum and Siwa, which is a mound ornamented by a few empty tins. The temperature in my tent at midday must have been about 120 degrees, and not a scrap of breeze or fresh air. This is real desert; there is not a vestige of any living thing, animal or vegetable. The ground is hard limestone covered with dark, shining pebbles, and in some places there are stretches of dried mud, left from the standing water after the rains. These mud pans are impassable in wet weather, and one has to make a wide detour to avoid them. Now they are cracked by the sun into a number of little fissures of a uniform size, about 6 inches square. The effect is very curious.