A lady, carrying her husband's spear and stick, has approached to look at me. She boasts silver ear-rings, has a string of amber beads around her neck, wears a dirty cloth, but in spite of her clothes looks, like all the women, clean and wholesome. She has gone and I still watch the well. Two young girls, unmarried--this is easily distinguished, as their hair is uncovered by the gauze affected by married women--have driven up some goats. It is a shallow well, and the nimble-footed goats can get down to the water. One black billy has already gone in, and, as the others come up, pokes his bearded face over the side of the well. His companions, mistaking him for a lion, dash wildly away. We all laugh. The two girls, with that gait peculiar to women all the world over, run after their goats and drive them back. Here come the sand-grouse in flocks. Before they came a few old crows were making themselves conspicuous, but now take a back seat. If you could sit with me and watch the endless procession of men, women, children, animals, and birds, coming and going, crossing and re-crossing, from apparently nowhere at all, you would realise how precious water really is, be it even as filthy and evil-smelling as from the wells here. The police corporal has taken down our camel tanks, each holding twelve gallons, and is having them filled. To-morrow we camp at a waterless spot. Our allowance of water will be one gallon each. Though not really important on this journey, woe betide the man who tries to wangle more. Better for him that he should steal a purse filled with gold than a bucket measure of water, the loss of which on some safaris might quite easily mean a man's life. The shades of night are falling swiftly, as they always do in the tropics, but the wells are still crowded. It has been a hot day; there has been no shade, and my head aches; so, though the well fascinates me--I sit at my camp table facing it and can see every move--I shall lay down my pencil for to-day. II This morning the baggage camels marched at two a.m.; we aristocrats of the riding brigade moved out at four a.m., by which hour the numerous caravans, camped at the wells last night, had all gone. As we rode out of camp we passed, close to the wells, two huge piles of stone about sixty yards in circumference, and eight feet high. On to one of these I climbed to find it was crater shaped. Evidently there had been a chamber, or hollow, underneath, the roof of which collapsing had given the crater-shape to the top of the mound. My escort implored me to descend. There was, they said, a great snake living amongst the stones whom it was wise to respect. Did they know who had piled up these stones? I asked. They did not. Perhaps the Gallas, but no one knew. There were things buried there, they said.