and covered again, till at last, half-kneaded, half-raw, half-roasted, and burnt all round, it was taken out to be broken up between the hungry band, and eaten scalding hot, before it should cool into an indescribable leathery substance, capable of defying the keenest appetite. A draught of dingy water was its sole but suitable accompaniment. “The meal ended, we had again without loss of time to resume our way from mirage to mirage, till ‘slowly flaming over all, from heat to heat, the day decreased,’ and about an hour before sunset we would stagger off our camels as best we might, to prepare an evening feast of precisely the same description as that of the forenoon, or more often, for fear lest the smoke of our fire should give notice to some distant rover, to content ourselves with dry dates, and half an hour’s rest on the sand. At last our dates, like Æsop’s bread-sack, or that of Beyhas, his Arab prototype, came to an end; and then our supper was a soldier’s one; what that is my military friends will know; but, grit and pebbles excepted, there was no bed in our case. After which, to remount, and travel on by moon or starlight, till a little before midnight we would lie down for just enough sleep to tantalize, not refresh. “It was now the 22d of June, and the fifth day since our departure from the wells of Wokba. The water in the skins had little more to offer to our thirst than muddy dregs, and as yet no sign appeared of a fresh supply. At last about noon we drew near some hillocks of loose gravel and sandstone a little on our right; our Bedouins conversed together awhile, and then turned their course and ours in that direction. ‘Hold fast on your camels, for they are going to be startled and jump about,’ said Salim to us. Why the camels should be startled I could not understand; when, on crossing the mounds just mentioned, we suddenly came on five or six black tents, of the very poorest description, pitched near some wells excavated in the gravelly hollow below. The reason of Salim’s precautionary hint now became evident, for our silly beasts started at first sight of the tents, as though they had never seen the like before, and then scampered about, bounding friskily here and there, till what between their jolting (for a camel’s run much resembles that of a cow) and our own laughing, we could hardly keep on their backs. However, thirst soon prevailed over timidity, and they left off their pranks to approach the well’s edge and sniff at the water below.”