The force of our caravan consists of about eighty people, including strangers, and two hundred laden camels. Nearly all the people are armed, and some single individuals have two or three matchlocks, besides pistols and daggers. The character of the people are petty traders, commission agents, camel-drivers, and slaves. There are several Arabs, natives of Ghadames, Seenawan, and Derge, and five strangers from Souf. We have with us also three Touaricks. There may be half-a-dozen low women and female slaves distributed amongst the ghafalah. Respectable females scarcely ever travel in The Desert. I have only with me my negro servant Said. My large trunk and tent are conveyed by another camel; the nagah carries me, the provisions, and the rest of the baggage, going extremely well. Said walks with the servants, slaves, and camel-drivers. Two-thirds of the people are on foot. Started in tolerably good health and spirits, and increase my appetite every mile I ride. Feel no fatigue, of course, to-day, and trust I shall soon forget I'm travelling in The Sahara. There are many routes from Ghadames to Ghat, no less than four or five well-travelled desert tracts. Our present one is the more easterly, being skirted by the oasisian districts of Fezzan. None of these routes have been travelled before by an European. Our course to-day is directly east. We are now encamping at sun-set, and we have just lost sight of the palms of Ghadames. Alas! this will, I fear, be an everlasting farewell to the beautiful oasis, and the holy city of merchants. _26th._--Rose before sunrise. Morning cool and refreshing. We are to continue ten days in the route of Fezzan, then turn into that of Ghat, thus describing a sort of semicircle to get out of the forays of the Shânbah. Course south-east. On the right ranges of low dull hills, with the same on the left, but at a greater distance. The road very good, fit for carriages, through the broad bed of a valley. Two great blocks of rock stand out on the surface which we traverse, one an oblong square, the other sugar-loaf, but flattened at the top. _Camel-drivers._--"Look at these brothers" (the two rocks.) _Myself._--"How! Are these brothers? They are not much like." _Camel-drivers._--"Yâkob, don't you know that one brother is born like the father, and the other like the mother?"