The little islets in the height of summer are the resort of flocks of water-birds who go there to breed undisturbed. On one of these, in July 1864, we collected over 2000 eggs of the tern, although the dry area above the strand consisted of scarcely so many square feet. At the approach of night the wind failed us, and with fluttering sails we drifted into sight of a place called Durroor. Two antique Turkish guard-houses of small dimensions gleamed with their white walls far across the sea. They are not unlike the rough-walled watch-towers of our fortresses, and are said to have been built by Selim II. when Yemen was subdued; they are the scanty remains of a past which continues to the present, isolated memorials of a barren, inhospitable coast, where all is changeless as the rolling waves. I shall not easily forget the nights which I passed becalmed upon that sea. Sleep there could be none. Drenched in perspiration, one could only sit by his lamp and indulge the hope that the breeze at daybreak might be somewhat cooler. Air and sea combined to form an interminable mass of vapour through which the moon could only penetrate with a lurid silvery gleam. One bright strip alone cleaves itself a way over the silent waves; it stretches towards an aperture in the horizon, which would seem to be the origin of all the brightness: but all is full of strange illusion, for the moon is here above our heads. The boat floats as though it were an aërial vessel in a globe of vapour; the depth of the sea, illumined by the vertical beams of the moon, is like another sky beneath us, and hosts of mysterious beings, diversified in colour and confused in form, are moving underneath our feet. The calmness of the air and the unbroken stillness of this spectral nature increased the magic of these moonlight nights. Late in the evening of the third day we ran into the harbour of Suakin. This town, formerly held directly subject to the Turkish power, had three years since, together with Massowa and the adjacent coast, been surrendered to the Viceroy of Egypt. In that short time it had remarkably improved. Formed by nature to serve as a harbour for the Egyptian Soudan, and even for Abyssinia, the place, as long as its administration came from Arabia and Constantinople, could inevitably never rise, and even now its prosperity is only comparative. The Egyptian Government still obstructs all traffic by the heavy duties which it levies even on the natural intercourse with Suez; it is desirous of transferring its interests as a centre to Massowa, watching continually with attentive eyes the ungoverned condition of Abyssinia. Since the traffic on the Nile by way of Berber ever continues in uninterrupted activity, and this place lies but 200 miles from Suakin, whilst the distance between Massowa and Khartoom is twice as far, why any preference should be given to Massowa is altogether incomprehensible. [Sidenote: SUAKIN.]