The Mislah water is full of saline particles, and is purging every body. The valley of Mislah, over which we are encamped, is not more than twenty minutes' walking in length, and half this in breadth. In many parts the sand is encrusted with a beautiful white salt. One of the Arabs of Souf said to me, "See, Yâkob, this is our country, all Souf is like this." So it appears an oasis may exist in a region of _shifting_ (?) sands. Are these the shifting sands which bury whole caravans beneath their sandy billows, when lashed up by the Desert tempest[63]? [Illustration] This reminds me of what Colonel Warrington told me of some tourist, who describes himself as killing a camel to procure the water from its stomach, when within a couple days from Tripoli, and on a spot where there was a splendid spring of never-failing water. I often asked the Arabs, if they ever killed the camel to get the water from its stomach? They replied, "They had often heard of such things." A merchant of Ghadames made, however, an apposite observation: "This is our sea, here we travel as you in your sea, bringing our provisions and water with us." These pits are considered the half-way house or station to Ghat. I'm told the route from Ghat to Aheer is much more easy and agreeable than this. Trust I shall find it so if I go. Begin to feel this irksome, and am in low spirits. People try to amuse me, and I have received many little presents of date-cakes and bazeen from them. Begin to relish this sort of food, and The Desert air sharpens the appetite. Yesterday, a slave of the ghafalah amused us with playing his rude bagpipe through these weary wastes. We are not very merry. There is very little conversation; we move on for hours in the most unbroken silence, nothing being said or whispered, no sound but the dull slow tread of the camel. Sometimes an Arab strikes up one of his plaintive ditties, and thinks of his green olive-clad mountain home in the Atlas. Happily there is little or no quarrelling. I am sure sixty people of all ages and tempers, were they Europeans, travelling in this region of blank monotony, oppressed with sombre reflections and without anything to relieve the senses, would not manage things so smoothly, or without quarrelling, and at times most desperately. For we are a _bonâ fide_ moving city, and at each well every body prepares to start afresh. Some mend their torn clothes, others the broken gear of the camels, others take out the raw materials from their bags and work up a new supply of provisions. Others wash and shave. Our Saharan travellers rarely wash themselves except at the wells. Their religion requires of them to wash their hands at their meals, but this they evade by rubbing their hands with a little sand, a privilege, however, Mahomet has only granted them when they can find no water. We followed the tracks of the few of our party who had preceded us. Here also the footstep is rigidly observed as in the American wilderness, and