"After travelling for nearly three days," says Bruce, "we had an unexpected entertainment, which filled our hearts with a very short-lived joy. The whole plain before us seemed thick-covered with green grass and yellow daisies. We advanced to the place with as much speed as our lame condition would suffer us; but how terrible was our disappointment when we found the whole of that verdure to consist in senna and coloquintida, the most nauseous of plants, and the most incapable of being substituted as food for man or beast! We were now very near a crisis one way or the other. Our bread was consumed, so that we had not sufficient for one day more; and, though we had camel's flesh, yet, by living so long on bread and water, an invincible repugnance arose either to smell or taste it. As our camels were at their last gasp, we had taken so sparingly of water, that, when we came to divide it, we found it insufficient for our necessities, if Syene was even so near as we conceived it to be. "Georgis had lost one eye, and was nearly blind in the other. Ismael and he had both become so stiff by being carried that they could not bear to set their feet to the ground; and I may say for myself, that, though I had supported the wounds in my feet with a patience very uncommon, yet they were arrived at a height to be perfectly intolerable, and, as I apprehended, on the point of mortification. The bandage which the Bishareen had tied about the hollow of my foot was now almost hidden by the flesh swelling over it. Three large wounds on the right foot and two on the left continued open, whence a quantity of lymph oozed continually. It was also with the utmost difficulty we could get out the rag by cutting it to shreds with scissors. The tale is both unpleasant and irksome. Two soles which remained from our sandals, the upper leathers of which had gone to pieces in the sand near Goos, were tied with a cotton cloth very adroitly by the Bishareen. But it seemed impossible that I could walk farther even with his assistance, and therefore we determined to throw away the quadrant, telescope, and timekeeper, and save our lives by riding the camels alternately. But Providence had already decreed that we should not terminate this dangerous journey by our own ordinary foresight and contrivance, but owe it entirely to his visible support and interposition.