All water-courses, with a supply of moist soil upon the ground just sufficient for a few months, although they are not enclosed by heights like valleys, are comprehended within the Arab designation “el wady.” Cheerless through the dry season, after the first rain their level sand flats are clothed with the most luxuriant flora; fresh springing grasses put forth their little cushion points, and give the sward the appearance of being dotted with a myriad spikes; then quickly come the sprouting blades, and all is like a waving field of corn. Halfway between Singat and Erkoweet we halted in a wady of this character, which bore the name of Sarroweet. What a prospect! how gay with its variety of hue, green and red and yellow! Nothing could be more pleasant than the shade of the acacia, nothing more striking than the abundance of bloom of the Abyssinian aloe, transforming the dreary sand-beds into smiling gardens. Green were the tabbes-grass and the acacias, yellow and red were the aloes, and in such crowded masses, that I was involuntarily reminded of the splendour of the tulip beds of the Netherlands; but here gardens lay in the midst of a waste of gloomy black stone. One special charm of a desert journey is that it is full of contrasts, that it brings close together dearth and plenty, death and life; it opens the eyes of the traveller to the minutest benefits of nature, and demonstrates how every enjoyment is allied to a corresponding deprivation. Richly laden with treasures I returned to Singat, where I remained until the 21st of September, and during my stay I had once again repeated opportunities of studying my old friends the people of Suakin in their domestic relations. The coast lands on both sides of the Red Sea offer a striking likeness to each other, which does not consist in physical resemblances alone. The people are the same in feeling and in manners, however much the true Ethiopians, such as the Bishareen, Hadendoa, and Beni-Ammer, may differ in language and descent from the true Arabs; I say from the _true_ Arabs, because the term Arab has been at times too indiscriminately applied, and ought to be limited to the nomads in Arabia, as distinguished from the settlers. On both coasts the inhabitants follow the same character of life. They are people of the deserts, wandering shepherds, and procure whatever corn they may require from external sources. Even the town life of the Arabs is essentially half a camp life. As a collateral illustration of this I may remark that to this day in Malta, where an Arab colony has reached as high a degree of civilisation as ever yet it has attained, the small towns, which are inhabited by this active little community, are called by the very same designations as elsewhere belong to the nomad encampments in the desert. Half Suakin is like a desert camp, and for this reason I have called its inhabitants town Bedouins. [Sidenote: TOWN BEDOUINS.]