In the night of the 19th, while they were encamped at a well, an attempt was made by a single robber to steal one of their camels. From this circumstance, which informed them they were come into the neighbourhood of man, they began to fear that they had approached the camp of some of those wandering Arabs who extract a scanty subsistence out of these torrid plains, and dwell all their lives amid simooms and pillars of moving sand, which form the terror of all other men. In the morning, however, no Arabs appeared; all was still; but, in diligently scrutinizing the appearance of the sand, they discovered the track of a man, by following which they soon came in sight of two ragged, old, dirty tents, pitched with grass cords. Two of Bruce’s attendants found, on entering the smaller tent, a naked woman; and our traveller himself, and Ismael the Turk, saw, on entering the larger one, “a man and a woman, both perfectly naked; frightful emaciated figures, not like the inhabitants of this world. The man was partly sitting on his hams; a child, seeming of the age to suck, was on a rag at the corner, and the woman looked as if she wished to hide herself.” Upon these miserable wretches they all immediately rushed like wild beasts, threatening to murder them; and, in fact, brought them all bound to their encampment, with the intention, at least on the part of all but Bruce, to put them to death. However, after terrifying them greatly, and learning from them some particulars respecting the movements of the tribe to which they belonged, it was resolved that the man should accompany them in chains, as a guide; and the women, after their camels had been lamed, left where they were until the return of their husband. If the man led them into danger he was to be put to death without mercy; if he served them faithfully Bruce engaged to clothe both him and his women, to present him with a camel, and a load of dora for them all. On the 22d one of the African attendants was seized with a kind of phrensy, and, their anxiety for their own preservation having extinguished their humanity, was left to perish among the burning sands. Their camels were now dropping off one by one; their bread grew scanty; and the water they found in the wells was so brackish that it scarcely served to quench their thirst. Languor and inactivity seized upon them all; all the weighty baggage and curiosities, such as shells, fossils, minerals, the counter-canes of the quadrant, telescopes, &c., were abandoned, and inevitable death appeared to stare them in the face.