On a hill near the plain, about half a mile from Bir Lammas, there are ruins of good style, probably of the Ashabir period of Hamdani. We were to ride five hours to the next water after Bir Lammas. I felt it would be an awful journey, as I was becoming more and more inert, but I was able to jump on to my camel as usual. I begged my husband to tell me as each hour passed, being quite determined never to ask too soon, but every time I did ask it turned out to be only twenty minutes from the last time. We were soon out of Wadi Lammas, and went over stony plains with basalt scattered over them, and no possible place to encamp, which I was keenly on the look-out for. We went through a curious little pass, not high, but a very narrow cutting just wide enough for us to ride through, for 300 yards, and then we had to wind down steeply at the other side over rocks. I began to feel that I had no control over my legs and I hardly cared to change my position for going up or down hill, and once when my camel slipped down about 5 feet, I started to fall off headlong, but a Bedou caught me by my leg and held me on. If I had fallen, as the path was very narrow, the camel would surely have stepped on me. I should certainly have cracked my skull first. Camels are not like horses--they do not object to stepping on people. A late sultan of Shukra fell from his camel and was trampled on, and 'though the Koran was read to him, and _herris_ or talismans were put on him, his breath would not stay in him, but came out in half an hour.' _Herrises_ are put on camels to make them strong; my husband's camel had one, of which its master was very proud. At last we came to the Wadi Samluf, and I begged that we might stop and have a camel fetched for water. I had to be dragged from my camel, and laid in the cinder-like sand till the tent was pitched, for, as my malarial fever was constant, and I had no tertian intervals, I lost my strength completely. Both my husband and I, and several others were very ill, and we were not strong enough to get at our medicine chest. The water was very bad. The Sultan Salem and other grandees camped at the more dangerous open mouth of the valley. The place where we pitched the tents was very pretty. There were trees and very fantastic peaky rocks against the sky, and a great step about 3 feet high, which had once been a wave of basalt, black on the yellow sand. The camel-men used to spread their beds and light their fire on this sort of stage by night, but they spent the day under the trees. The last night we were in the Wadi Samluf there was a great noise--guns firing, parties going out to reconnoitre, and shouting--but it turned out that the new-comers who arrived at such an unseasonable hour were sent by the sultan of Shukra to welcome and escort us.