A Derge Arab said to me this evening, "The English will never come to Derge, wherever else they may go. The climate will kill them; in three days you will die of fever." The love of discussion, as well as their complaints against the Turkish Government, follow our people through The Desert. They are trying to make me turn Mohammedan, as far as disputing goes, and I have enough to do to get rid of their importunities. Sometimes I get the conversation turned by telling them, if I turn Mussulman I shall offend my Sultan. They reply, "Oh! you can confess with your lips, that you are a Christian, whilst you remain a Mussulman in your heart." One fellow got saucy, and said, turning up the fire with a stick, "The Jews and Christians will have this (fire) for ever." Threatening to report him to the Rais of Ghadames, he exclaimed, "The dog Rais has no rule in The Sahara." The other people made him hold his tongue. Felt the cold last night but especially this morning. It nips me up severely. Sleep in the clothes I wear during the day, and have additional covering of a thick rug and a cloak. We pitch no tents. Very little water is now drunk. Our people seem to shun it as mad dogs. As to the morning, no one drinks water this time of the day. How different to the summer! when a drink of water is sometimes reckoned a great favour, an immense boon, a heaven's best gift. _30th._--A fine morning; the dawn almost cloudless. Not so yesterday, volumes of cloud on cloud inflamed with purple stretched over all the east, not unlike an English summer's dawn, but the colours more vivid. But this was succeeded by the dreariest of days. In summer, the Saharan dawn is usually cloudless, and offers no beautiful variety of colours. The cloud of yesterday was surcharged with wind, which we soon felt to our annoyance. In The Desert the wind generally rises in the morning and falls in the evening. We continued our course over the vast plain all the morning, but at midday it broke into wide shallow valleys, and in the evening it was cut across by a large broad valley, or wady, as the Moors called it, stretching east and west. In this wady lies the well of _Năthār_ or _Năjār_, some spelling the name with the ‮ز‬--‮النزار‬. Here we encamp. We had come a very long weary day. Begin to feel very sensibly the hardships of Desert travelling. The length of a day's journey depends upon whether water is near or far off, and also upon there being fodder for camels. Our Arabs are obliged to look out lest they encamp upon an arid spot where the poor camel cannot crop a single herb. Mostly in the beds--dry beds of these wadys--there is some herbage and brushwood. The well of Nathar is very deep, and cut through rock as well as earth, but its water is extremely sweet and delicious. We usually find the best water running through rocky soil. _En route_, I observed no living creature, save a grasshopper, which had managed to get into existence amidst these herbless wilds.