_2nd._--A very fine morning, and, as I anticipated, it turned out very hot. Yet whilst the sun scorched my face on one side, the cold wind from the east blanched my cheek on the other. No living creature seen but a few insects. Our people fell in with the skeleton of a Touarick ass, and amused themselves with setting it up upon its legs, as if in the pillory. I rallied them afterwards as they were in a good humour, on their terror of banditti yesterday. They replied, "It was the number of people on foot which alarmed us, banditti generally go on foot with a few camels to carry provisions and water." We started at sun-rise and encamped an hour before sun-set, to have light enough to collect firewood, and forage for the camels. The ground of our course to-day was broken into broad and long valleys. In the wady where we encamp is herbage for camels. I notice as a thing most extraordinary, after seven days from Ghadames, two small trees! the common Desert acacia. Another phenomenon, I see two or three pretty blue flowers! as I picked one up, I could not help exclaiming, _Elhamdullah_, ("Praise to God!") for Arabic was growing second-born to my tongue, and I began to think in it. An Arab said to me, "Yâkob, if we had a reed and were to make a melodious sound, those flowers, the colour of heaven, would open and shut their mouths (petals)." This fiction is extremely poetical. Felt unwell this morning from eating or munching too many dates; better this evening. All our people well, and no accidents. _3rd._--Rose at sun-rise and pursued our weary way over broken ground, now broad valleys, now low hills. Whilst exclaiming that the sandy desert was all "a report," "a talk," "a fabrication of travellers who wished to increase and vary the catalogue of Saharan hardships," at noon we came upon a range of sand-hills. These increased on every side, and at length we cut right across a group of them. Having left the plateau the mirage has also disappeared, apparently the only species of desert where it can be fairly developed. With the sand has appeared a new kind of stone, of a light-blue slate colour, some of it of as firm a consistence as granite. Its colour also sometimes varies to a beautiful light green. The Desert itself only increases and varies in hideousness. And yet in some places where sand is sprinkled over the hardened earth, a little coarse herbage springs up. Encamped at night. Cold all day. Felt unwell. To-day and yesterday course mostly south.