Baggage camels, each to carry 300 pounds’ load, with one driver to every two camels, the drivers to act as general labourers at a camp and to collect wood and water and to carry supplies up the mountains when required 120 Riding camels 120 Porters 70 to 80 A small amount of agriculture is practised in the Wadi Di-ib, slightly south of the Sudan frontier, but there is none actually within the district here described. My camels were fed for some time on _durra_ (Indian corn) brought from Wadi Di-ib. A little fishing is carried on near Berenice and at Mersa Shab and Halaib, but only for the food of the fishermen, who subsist almost entirely on it, and thus recall the _Ichthyophages_ of Ptolemy. When I had abundance of excellent fish at Shab and Halaib, I noticed that but few of my Bisharin cared to partake of what was to me a very welcome change of diet. Halaib is the only permanent village, and even it is merely a miserable collection of wooden huts and tents, where trade is confined to dates, fat, corn, sugar, and such like necessaries; supplies are brought by boat from Suakin and sold to the local Arabs. =Communications.= There are numerous camel-roads connecting the various wells with each other and with the Nile, the principal of which are indicated on Plate III (p. 26). The most usual starting points from the valley are Edfu, Kom Ombo, Aswân, Dakka, and Berber. The roads lie mostly along wadis, and are far from being very direct, being necessarily so chosen as to pass water supplies and to avoid very steep places. From Aswân or Kom Ombo, Berenice can be reached in about seven or eight days by luggage camels, and the roads are fairly good; water is least scarce on the Kom Ombo road, which takes advantage of the wells of Qoleib and Abu Hashim. Between any two wells, there are generally several possible roads. The one taken by any particular traveller is naturally that which his guides happen to know best, or that along which the most camel food is to be found at the time; hardly any two Europeans have journeyed by precisely the same road. A “road” in desert parlance is only a track by which camels have passed at some time or other; there is nothing of the nature of a _made_ road, even along the ancient routes mentioned in the Antonine Itinerary; and the tracks are sometimes obliterated by sand. Since the opening up of Port Sudan, the Elba district is most easily reached from that place, whence it is about 340 kilometres distant, by two roads of nearly equal length, one skirting the coast and the other more inland; the latter passes good wells at about two days’ intervals.[60] To reach Elba from the valley, a camel journey of more than 500 kilometres is necessary whether Aswân, Dakka, or Berber be the starting point. The