The mosquitoes last night were a reminder that we are no longer up on the high desert; they were maddening, in spite of a net. This morning everybody bathed and shaved and generally polished up. We rode across to the town in great style; past the palm-shaded gardens with fences of yellow “gerida”—palm branches; past the white rest house, on the terraced side of a curious conical hill called “The Hill of the Dead,” honeycombed with rock tombs; past the long low “Markaz,” where the mamur and the police guard turned out to see us; across the wide market square, and through the narrow streets between tall houses of sunbaked clay below the enormous high walls of the old town. The heat was already great, and the streets were almost deserted, except for a few recumbent figures in a shady corner of the market-place, who scrambled up as we rode by and then hurried off to tell their friends that the “Hagana”—Camel Corps—had arrived. The Camel Corps barracks and the District Officer’s house are out on the sand about half a mile south of the town. They occupy two isolated rocks about a quarter of a mile apart, which were formerly the strongholds of two Siwan sheikhs. The District Officer’s house stands on a limestone rock about 50 feet high. It is a high house built of mud and palm log beams. To reach it one goes up a steep path in the rock with roughly cut steps on to a little terrace with a sort of loggia that opens through the building into the large courtyard behind, which is surrounded by a high loopholed wall. There are two rooms on the ground floor, both high and long, about 30 by 15 feet, and two more rooms above with a roofed loggia and an open roof. The rooms have three windows in each, with glass in them, the only glass in Siwa, facing north and looking across the grove of palm trees below the house to the strange-looking town on its two rocks. The house was built by the former District Officer, who added to the old Siwan fortress which existed there; it has a wonderful position and is high enough to be free from mosquitoes.