The stationary camp also retained Lieutenant Yusuf and MM. Duguid and Philipin, with thirteen soldiers and sixteen miners. The six camels were placed under Gabr, Kázi el-'Orbán; and all the stay-behinds were charged with washing the several earths, with scouring the country for specimens, and with transporting sundry tons of the black sand before mentioned. Old Haji Wali, probably frightened by the Arabs, and maddened by the idea that, during his absence in the thick of the cotton season, the Fellahs of Zagázig would neglect to pay their various debts, began to "malinger" with such intensity of purpose, that I feared lest he would kill himself to spite us. The venerable Shylock, who ever pleaded poverty, had made some £300 by lending a napoleon, say, on January 1st, which became a sovereign on February 1st; not to speak of the presents and "benevolences" which the debtor would be compelled to offer his creditor. So he departed for El-Muwaylah, whence some correspondent had warned him that a pilgrim boat was about to start; declaring that he was dying, and trotting his mule as hard as it would go, the moment a safe corner was turned. He stayed two days on board the gunboat, and straightway returned to Egypt and the cotton season:--we had the supreme satisfaction, however, to hear that he had gone through the long quarantine at Tor. Yet after our return he reproached me, with inimitable coolness and effrontery, for not having behaved well to him. On the morning of January 7th, a walk of two hours and twenty minutes (= seven miles) northwards, and mostly along the shore of the noble "Musaybat Sharmá," transferred us to well-remembered 'Aynúnah. The sea in places washed over slabs of the fine old conglomerates which, in this country, line the banks and soles of all the greater Wadys: these are the Cascalho of the Brazil, a rock which is treated by rejecting the pebbles and by pounding the silicious paste. The air was softer and less exciting than that of Sharmá; and, although the vegetation was of the crapaud mort d'amour hue--here a sickly green, there a duller brown than April had showed--the scene was more picturesque, the "Gate" was taller and narrower, and the recollection of a happy first visit made me return to it with pleasure. Birds were more abundant: long-shanked water-fowl with hazel eyes; red-legged rail; the brown swallow of Egypt; green-blue fly-catchers; and a black muscivor, with a snowy-white rump, of which I failed to secure a specimen. We also saw the tern-coloured plover, known in Egypt as Domenicain and red kingfishers. The game species were fine large green mallard; dark pintail; quail, and red-beaked brown partridge with the soft black eye.