Think I also saw an ant near the foot of the camel. A few flies still follow our caravan, which we brought from Ghadames. These witless things have wisdom enough not to remain behind and perish in The Desert. Passed by two dead camels, fast decomposing into bones. Road all small stones sprinkled over an earthy soil, or altogether earth. Mirage again seen, with similar phenomena. Small islets in the midst of lakes, and white foam running on the ground as on the sea-shore. Our course S. and S.E. _1st December._--A fine mild morning, but intensely cold during the past night. Here we took fresh water enough for four days, the time required to arrive at the next well. Started about 11 A.M., and continued only three hours and a half, when we came to another wady, where we stopped in order to let the camels have their fill of the rich fodder with which the wady is covered. The plateau is now apparently disappearing, for it is broken into deep and broad valleys, from the sides of which rise in groups, and at various distances, low ranges of Saharan hills, and on one side, is a range very high, having very wild mountainous features. We have now travelled nearly six days, and have not yet met with fifty yards of sandy route. So much for the sandy Desert! All is either earth, sometimes as hard-baked as stone, or large blocks of stone, but chiefly very small chips of stone covering the entire surface. Our Arabs ask me, "Whether I prefer travelling by land or sea?" They imagine Christians, when they travel, necessarily travel by sea. They are also greatly astonished when I tell them we have no Sahara in England, and cannot credit the idea of a country being full of cultivated fields and gardens. The rest of our ghafalah, consisting of more than a third, is not yet come up, but Haj-el-Besheer and the Touarick Ali have joined us again and report them to be at the well of Nather. Two or three birds were seen this morning about the wells. They were excessively familiar, and knew instinctively how to estimate the sight of a caravan for the crumbs and grains it might leave behind. They seemed also quite at home at the well. Still one would think they were birds of passage, like ourselves, for there are no trees or bushes for them to build in, and little to eat. Saw also a single lizard. I believe lizards abound in every part of The Sahara, but the cold now keeps them in their holes.