But it must be recognized that in spite of its beauty the palm plantation of Ounianga is but wretchedness, gloom, and disappointment. The inhabitants, known as Ounias, are few—some hundreds at most. On the other hand, millions of flies fiercely exercise their buzzing activity for fourteen hours a day on man and beast. The soil is unfruitful, and produces hardly anything but dates. The foodstuffs necessary to life—cereals, butter, smoke-dried meat—are brought at great cost by caravans coming from Abéché to seek the supplies of salt from Arouelli needed by the inhabitants of Wadai. Even the camels cannot live in the neighbourhood for want of enough pasture, and from this cause our little garrison had the utmost difficulty not only in getting supplies, but in fulfilling the mission of watching the approaches of the frontier, and especially the great road from Koufra that emerges from the Libyan desert in the region of Tekro Arouelli. It occupied at the north end of the lake a little rectangular fort, solidly built, but surrounded at a short distance by rocks that blocked the view and overlooked it to the north and east. It had not been possible to find a more favourable site, offering at the same time extensive views and an easily accessible water-supply. I devoted two days to different tasks (inspections of the garrison, interviews with the Ounia chiefs and with two Khoans, former governors of the country in the time of the Senoussist domination, and so forth), and set out again on October 11 to visit the last water-points before entering the Libyan desert. The Libyan desert is still almost completely unknown, no European traveller having been able as yet to cross it from side to side, whether from north to south or from east to west. In 1870 Gerhardt Rohlfs visited the northern part, as far as the oases of Koufra; a quarter of a century later British officers penetrated the south-eastern region as far as Bir Natrun, about 200 miles west of the Nile. On our part, we have been able to explore the south-western district and to obtain in respect of the central part fresh information, which it will not be easy to verify and extend until the French, British, and Italian governments combine in organizing for that purpose a geographical expedition, which would be of considerable scientific and even political interest.