Soon Hodeida was left behind us in the distance, and we were in the heart of the desert. As far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but sand,--low flat sand hills grown over with dry grass. Roads, of course, there were none; tracks in the sand, made by the passing of other caravans,--that was all. Our march was frequently interrupted by a halt, for in the beginning especially, it happened every little while that one of the men devoted an over-amount of energy to guiding and mastering his steed, and the ensuing duel usually came off to the humiliation of the rider. The next thing to be done then, was to catch the riderless beast that was making the most of its freedom, a duty which usually devolved upon the officers, as they were the only ones who could ride. With the donkeys and the mules this was no small undertaking. Hardly had we come up to one of these animals when it would turn and kick out vigorously with its hind legs, and it would then require a resort to all the diplomacy and cunning at our command to get hold of it again. That these diversions should not cause us too great a loss of time, one of the officers always rode at the rear end of the caravan to round up the riderless steeds, and the steedless riders, and form them into a sort of rear guard. As the nights were clear and bright with moonlight, we found our way very easily. We rode the whole night through, stopping only occasionally for a half hour's rest. Then we all flung ourselves down in the sand, just where we happened to be, slung our reins around one arm, or tied them to one of our legs, and so found rest for our weary bodies, weary from the strain of the long continued ride. The region through which we were traveling was not considered a wholly safe one. Robbery and attacks upon small caravans were the order of the day. As early as the second night out, we had an experience of this kind ourselves. Suddenly, in the moonlight, there appeared to one side of our road a dozen or more men mounted on camels. The Turkish gendarmes that had been sent with us as an escort and to guide us on the way, declared them to be robbers, and immediately got their rifles ready to shoot. When the men on the camels saw the size of our caravan, they vanished among the sand hills quite as suddenly as they had appeared.