“Two days passed drearily enough. We could not but long for our guide’s arrival, nor be wholly without fear on more than one score. Once or twice a stray peasant stumbled on us, and was much surprised at our encampment in so droughty a locality. So the hours went by, till the third day brought closer expectation and anxiety, still increasing while the sun declined, and at last went down; yet nobody appeared. But just as darkness closed in, and we were sitting in a dispirited group beside our little fire, for the night air blew chill, Aboo-’Eysa came suddenly up, and all was changed for question and answer, for cheerfulness and laughter. “Early on November 28th we resumed our march through a light valley-mist, and soon fell in with our companions of the road. “Next morning the whole country, hill and dale, trees and bushes, was wrapped in a thick blanket of mist, fitter for Surrey than for Arabia. So dense was the milky fog, that we fairly lost our way, and went on at random, shouting and hallooing, driving our beasts now here, now there, over broken ground and amid tangling shrubs, till the sun gained strength and the vapor cleared off, showing us the path at some distance on our right. Before we had followed it far, we saw a black mass advancing from the east to meet us. It was the first division of the Hasa troops on their way to Ri’ad; they were not less than four or five hundred in number. Like true Arabs, they marched with a noble contempt of order and discipline—walking, galloping, ambling, singing, shouting, alone or in bands, as fancy led. We interchanged a few words of greeting with these brisk boys, who avowed, without hesitation or shame, that they should much have preferred to stay at home, and that enforced necessity, not any military or religious ardor, was taking them to the field. We laughed, and wished them Zamil’s head, or him theirs, whereon they laughed also, shouted, and passed on. “On we went, but through a country of much more varied scenery than what we had traversed the day before, enjoying the ‘pleasure situate in hill and dale,’ till we arrived at the foot of a high white cliff, almost like that of Dover; but these crags, instead of having the sea at their foot, overlooked a wide valley full of trees, and bearing traces of many violent winter torrents from east to west; none were now flowing. Here we halted, and passed an indifferent night, much annoyed by ‘chill November’s surly blast,’ hardly less ungenial here than on the banks of Ayr, though sweeping over a latitude of 25°, not 56°. “Before the starlight had faded from the cold morning sky, we were up and in movement, for a long march was before us. At sunrise we stood on the last, and here the highest, ledge of Toweyk, that long chalky wall which bounds and backs up Nedjed on the east; beyond is the desert, and then the coast.