The navigation of an Arab dhow is no easy task, with its clumsy arrangements for sails, when there is a strong north wind behind it and reefs in every direction. Three men are perpetually in the bows on the look out for rocks, and indicate the presence of danger to the steersman by raising their hands. The gear of these boats is exceedingly primitive. They do not understand reefing a sail, hence they are obliged to have no less than five different sizes, which they are constantly changing as occasion requires. They use a clumsy cogwheel for raising and lowering the sails, and do it all by main force, singing silly little distiches and screaming at the top of their voices as they haul the ropes. The arrangement for baling out the bilge water is extremely laborious. A large trough, with channels on either side, is erected in the centre of the boat, into the middle of which the water is baled by skins from below, and the stenches during the process are truly awful, as the water flows out of either channel, according to the roll of the ship. There was always a large surface of wet wood to dry up. Leaving Kosseir on the last day of 1895, we reached Ras Bernas on the second day of 1896, stopping, of course, each night, always rolling and tossing about, and always keeping a sharp look out for coral reefs, the watchers shouting advice continually to Reis Hamaya. We were supposed to owe our safety in getting through some dangerous reefs, with not a yard to spare on either side, and escaping our other difficulties, to the lucky fact of Reis Hamaya's having discovered amongst the plants that my husband had collected in our walks ashore one of the order of _Compositae_, which he pounced on gladly and hung on the bow of the _Taisir_, as a protection to us. He pointed out another thing, a shrub called _tuldum_, with tiny yellow flowers on green stalks, good to tie round the arm to make one see far. Ras Bernas is a long, wandering cape composed of rocky hills of ironstone and silicate curiously blended together, with shoals and rocks, and coral reefs, and sandbanks hanging on to it in very shallow water. It is about twenty-five miles long, and ends in a sandy spit. We encamped at the head of the lagoon, and spent several days amongst the ruins of this old Ptolemaic town of Berenice, and made sundry excavations there. In its centre is an old temple of the date of Tiberius Caesar, the hieroglyphs in which are rapidly becoming obliterated. All around is a sea of mounds covered with sand, where the houses stood, mostly built of madrepore, and laid out in streets. On the surface are to be found numerous glass beads, Roman coins, bracelets, &c. and a great number of fragments of rough emeralds. From the celebrated emerald-mines in the mountain behind we picked up fully fifty of these, besides a large quantity of olivines or peridots, cornelians, and crystals, testifying to the wealth of these parts in precious stones in ancient days.