Condemned for the last two months to live upon barley-meal, moistened with tea, the mere sight of our legs of mutton seemed to fortify our stomachs and invigorate our emaciated limbs. The remainder of the day was occupied in culinary preparations. By way of condiment and seasoning, we had only a little garlic, and that little so frozen and dried that it was almost imperceptible in its shell. We peeled, however, all we had, and stuck it into two legs of mutton, which we set to boil in our great cauldron. The argols, which abounded in this blessed plain, supplied ample materials for cooking our inestimable supper. The sun was just setting, and Samdadchiemba, who had been inspecting one of the legs of mutton with his thumb-nail, had triumphantly announced that the mutton was boiled to a bubble, when we heard in all directions, the disastrous cry, “Fire! fire!” (_Mi yon! mi yon_!) At one bound we were outside our tent, where we found that the flame, which had caught some dry grass, in the interior of the encampment, and menaced to assail also our linen tents, was spreading about, in all directions, with fearful rapidity. All the travellers, armed with their felt carpets, were endeavouring to stifle the flame, or at all events to keep it from reaching the tents, and in this latter effort they were quite successful. The fire, repulsed on all sides, forced an issue from the encampment, and rushed out into the desert, where, driven by the wind, it spread over the pasturages, which it devoured as it went. We thought, however, that we had nothing further to fear; but the cry, “Save the camels! save the [Picture: Fire in the camp] camels!” at once reminded us how little we knew of a conflagration in the desert. We soon perceived that the camels stolidly awaited the flame, instead of fleeing from it, as the horses and oxen did. We hereupon hastened to the succour of our beasts, which, at the moment, seemed tolerably remote from the flame. The flame, however, reached them as soon as we did, and at once surrounded us and them. It was to no purpose we pushed and beat the stupid brutes; not an inch would they stir; but there they stood phlegmatically gaping at us with an air that seemed to ask us, what right we had to come and interrupt them at their meals. We really felt as if we could have killed the impracticable beasts. The fire consumed so rapidly the grass it encountered, that it soon assailed the camels, and caught their long, thick hair; and it was with the utmost exertion that, by the aid of the felt carpets we had brought with us, we extinguished the flame upon their bodies. We got three of them out of the fire, with only the end of their hair singed, but the fourth was reduced to a deplorable condition; not a bristle remained on its entire body; the whole system of hair was burned down to the skim, and the skin itself was terribly charred.