Shortly after midnight the march was resumed by the moon's light over a succession of small barren terraces, confined by conical and rounded hills. In the lone valley of Henraddee Dowar, which opens into the wide level plain of Gurguddee, there stood by the wayside a vast pile of loose stones, half concealed among the tall jaundice-looking flowers of the senna plant. Towards this spot ensued a general race on the part of escort and camel-drivers, who each added a pebble whilst repeating the Arabic auguration, "_Nauzu billahi mina Shaytani r rajim_."--"Let us flee for refuge to God from Satan the stoned." A tragic legend was attached to the cairn, which, from the dimensions attained, must have dated from a remote epoch. A hoary old man, accused in days long gone of incestuous intercourse with his own daughter, was arraigned before a tribunal of his assembled tribe, and, being fully convicted, was on this spot stoned to death, together with his fair partner in guilt. Throughout Syria and Palestine it is to this day the practice of all who pass the mounds raised over those who die in crime, and whose memory it is intended to dishonour, thus to contribute a stone, as well with a view to perpetuate the monument, as to shield themselves from evil by manifesting the detestation entertained of the infamy commemorated. Gurguddee, eight miles in length, and stretching on either hand to the far horizon, is bounded by steep mountain ranges, whence an alluvial deposit washed down by the rains, presented over the whole of the level plain a surface of cracked and hardened mud, like that of a recently-dried morass. From the southern side, where the clayey tract is thickly clothed with stunted tamarisk and _spartium_, a road strikes up the valley in a north-westerly direction to the Mudaito town of Aussa, distant some three days' journey for a caravan. As the day dawned, the steeple necks of a troop of ostriches were perceived nodding in the landscape, as the gigantic birds kicked the dust behind their heavy heels; and a herd of graceful gazelles were seen scouring towards a belt of stony hillocks which skirted the dry pebbly bed of a river, that expends its waters on the sun-dried plain. Ascending this stream, in which were a few stagnant pools of bitter unpalatable water, a human figure was detected skulking behind some thick green tamarisks by which they were overshadowed. But on being perseveringly hunted down by Mohammad Ali and his wild myrmidons, the prisoner proved to be a Debeni in quest of truant camels--his attempt at concealment having, according to his own account, arisen from the appearance of so many mounted cavaliers, whom he had mistaken for a foraging party of the Eesah, and was naturally desirous of eluding.