Journeying one whole day and night over an open plateau, where they saw a large troop of ostriches, they mounted again on the 30th, by the light of the morning star, anxious to enter the Djowf before the intense heat of noon should come on; “but we had yet a long way to go, and our track followed endless windings among low hills and stony ledges, without any symptom of approach to cultivated regions. At last the slopes grew greener, and a small knot of houses, with traces of tillage close by, appeared. It was the little village of Djoon, the most westerly appendage of Djowf itself. I counted between twenty and thirty houses. We next entered a long and narrow pass, whose precipitous banks shut in the view on either side. Suddenly several horsemen appeared on the opposite cliff, and one of them, a handsome youth, with long, curling hair, well armed and well mounted (we shall make his more special acquaintance in the next chapter), called out to our guide to halt, and answer in his own behalf and ours. This Suleyman did, not without those marks of timidity in his voice and gesture which a Bedouin seldom fails to show on his approach to a town, for, when once in it, he is apt to sneak about much like a dog who has just received a beating for theft. On his answer, delivered in a most submissive tone, the horsemen held a brief consultation, and we then saw two of them turn their horses’ heads and gallop off in the direction of the Djowf, while our original interlocutor called out to Suleyman, ‘All right, go on, and fear nothing,’ and then disappeared after the rest of the band behind the verge of the upland. “We had yet to drag on for an hour of tedious march; my camel fairly broke down, and fell again and again; his bad example was followed by the coffee-laden beast; the heat was terrible in these gorges, and noon was approaching. At last we cleared the pass, but found the onward prospect still shut out by an intervening mass of rocks. The water in our skins was spent, and we had eaten nothing that morning. When shall we get in sight of the Djowf? or has it flown away from before us? While thus wearily laboring on our way we turned a huge pile of crags, and a new and beautiful scene burst upon our view. [Picture: An Arab Chief]