On our return to Halaib we passed a Bisharin encampment, consisting of half a dozen beehive huts made of matting on rounded sticks. The women were weaving rough cloths at the door of one of them, and were dressed in long sheets which once may have been white, but are now the colour of dirt. They had glass beads and cowries tied to their matted locks, and brass and silver rings of considerable size fastened to their noses; the small children ran about naked, with waistbands of leather straps, on which were strung long agate and carnelian beads, with cowrie danglements hanging down in front. They seemed very poor, and the old ladies to whom my husband gave pinches of tobacco were so effusive in their gratitude that for some moments he feared his generosity was to be rewarded by a kiss. Our net results from the excursions from Halaib were more or less of a negative character. The mountain scenery was grand, and the climate exquisite, but, from our observations, we came to the conclusion that at no time was this country of much use to anybody, and that it never had been thickly inhabited, the existence of Aydab being probably due to its position as a convenient port opposite Arabia for the inhabitants of the Nile Valley. Water is, and probably always has been, very scarce here, and, except after the rains, this country is little better than a desert. The Bishari of the Akhmed Orab tribe, who inhabit the mountains, are exceedingly few in number, and the Batran told us that all the way from Ras Bernas to Mount Sorturba, just south of Shellal, over which country his rule extends, the whole tribe could muster only about three hundred fighting men. They have the Ababdeh to the north, and the Amara Bisharin to the south, and apparently their relations with their neighbours are usually strained. These tribes are purely pastoral, and cultivate no land whatsoever. They live in huts in groups of from three to six together, and are scattered over the country at wide intervals. They wear their hair fuzzy at the top, with a row of curls hanging down the neck, usually white and stiff with mutton fat. They are medium-sized, dark-skinned, and some of them decidedly handsome. They are girt only with a loin-cloth and sheet, and every shepherd here carries his shield and his sword. Under a good and settled government they would undoubtedly be excellent members of society, but with the Khalifa on one side and the Egyptian Government on the other their position is by no means an enviable one. Their huts are very small and dingy, being constructed with bent sticks on which palm-leaf matting is stretched; inside they are decorated with their paraphernalia for weddings and camel-travelling, all elaborately decorated with cowrie and other shells, the most remarkable of these things being the tall conical hats with long streamers used for dances at weddings, entirely covered with cowrie shells in pretty patterns. The