The water of our well was not very good; from being at first discoloured, it gradually acquired a taste like that of ink, and when boiled with tea became entirely black. Late in the evening our best and most steady servant, Mohammed from Gatrón, was wounded, but whether stung by a scorpion or bitten by a snake he knew not, and was much alarmed. We applied spirits of hartshorn to the wound; but he was very ill for the next twenty-four hours, and totally disabled, so that we were obliged to bind him on the camel during the next day’s march. [Sidenote: Saturday, July 13th.] There had been much talk for some days to the effect that we travellers, together with Hatíta, should take the nearer, but more difficult, road to Ghát across the range, while our luggage should go by the longer, but smoother, road round the mountains; but it was at length decided that we should all go by the longer road, and none but the Sfaksi, who was anxious to overtake the caravan as soon as possible, took the more difficult path, which, for geological observations, might have proved the more interesting. Going sometimes on pebbly, at others on sandy ground, after five miles we reached the shallow valley, Ilághlaghén, running from east to west, and handsomely overgrown with bushes; and after another stretch of about the same length, we entered the range of mountains, consisting of remarkably cragged and scarred rocks, with many narrow defiles. Altogether it presented a very curious spectacle. When the rocks assumed a smoother appearance, we suddenly descended into a deep ravine, which, at the first glance, appeared to be of a volcanic nature; but, on closer inspection, all the black rocks composing these dismal-looking cliffs, proved to consist of sandstone, blackened by the influence of the atmosphere: further on it was disposed in regular strata very much like slate. The western and highest part of the range seems to consist of clay-slate. The valley changed its character in some degree after its junction with a side-valley called Tipérkum, which bears distinct marks of great floods occasionally descending along its channel from the mountains. Here we collected some firewood, as we were told that further on we should find none, and then entered a defile or glen with an ascent of about a hundred feet above the bottom of the valley. Beyond this the scene grew more open, and irregular plains, interrupted by steep buttresses, succeeded each other.