At sunset the scene is exquisite, the hills turn from pink to mauve, and from mauve to purple, and their peaks are sharply outlined against the gold and crimson sky; long violet shadows spread across the rosy-tinted sand-hills, and the palm groves seem to take on a more vivid shade of green. The smoke ascends in thin spirals from the evening fires, and a low murmur rises from the streets and squares below; then suddenly the prayer of the muezzin sounds from the many mosques, and one can see the white-robed figures swaying to and fro on the narrow pinnacles of the round towers that in Siwa take the place of minarets. When the call to prayer is over and the last mournful chant has echoed across the oasis, and the glow in the sky is fading away, one hears far down beneath the soft thudding of a tom-tom and perhaps the faint whine of a reed pipe. When the deep blue Libyan night covers the city the music becomes louder and seems to throb like a feverish pulse from the heart of the town. Often in the evening I rode out and called on the Sheikh of Aghourmi, which is the little village on another rock two miles from Siwa. Mahdi Abdel Nebi had recently succeeded to his father as Sheikh of Aghourmi and was having some difficulty in sustaining his authority, even with the support of the Administration, against the plots and intrigues of an old cousin of his, one Haj Mohammed Hammam, a sly old man who was rich, influential, and a thorough scoundrel, and wished to oust his cousin and become sheikh himself. After the war Haj Hammam had carefully cultivated the acquaintance of any British officers who came to Siwa, and he was inordinately proud of knowing their names and of certain small gifts that they had given him—a broken compass, a highly coloured biscuit tin and some photographs. These he showed on every occasion, and also remarked that they used always to call him “_The_ Sheikh of Aghourmi”—this apparently being his only claim to the title. Hammam used to employ people to let him know immediately when I was riding out to Aghourmi, so that he, and not the sheikh, should be waiting to receive me at the gates; then he would try to persuade me to accept his hospitality instead of the sheikh’s. Sheikh Mahdi always invited his old cousin to the tea drinking, though I could well have dispensed with him, but one could not object to the presence of another guest. Sheikh Mahdi’s house was the only one in which a woman ever appeared when I was there. She was an old Sudanese slave woman who had been brought many years ago from the Sudan. Once I got her to tell me her story, but she spoke such a queer mixture of Arabic and Siwan that it was difficult to follow.