As to myself, personally, in this part of the route, I have suffered most from want of sleep. In the day-time it was too hot to sleep, and in the night I was on the back of the camel, where, of course, for the present, I could not be expected to sleep, though many of the Arabs, nay, merchants slept. I should say all slept on the camel as soundly as in a bed. So that what I saved of suffering from the heat of day-travelling, I lost in want of sleep by night-travelling. Poor human brute! I thought of the fable of the ass and his winter and summer advantages and disadvantages. The hottest day was yesterday, last of the four, when we encamped in a dry bed of a river. I shall never forget that day, forget what I may else! I was first on the point of being suffocated, and seemed at my last gasp. I began to think that the predictions of my _friends_ in Tripoli were about to be verified. I was to succumb to make them prophets! In addition to this my deep distress, I felt the wound of pride. I got some tea made, I can't tell how, and poured some brandy into it. This I drank, and from a fever of delirium found myself conscious again, and swimming in a bath of perspiration. The crisis was now passed, and I was to see Ghadames and Ghat, and return to my fatherland. So fate--rather Providence--would have it. Every day, until I reached Ghadames, there was a sort of point of halting between life and suffocation or death in my poor frame, when the European nature struggled boldly and successfully with the African sun, and all his accumulated force darting down fires and flames upon my devoted head. After this point or crisis was past, I always found myself much better. It is strange that my head never ached, nor was in any way affected during the whole route, except in the one day mentioned. Some and all have vainly invoked sleep upon a bed, in the time of darkness and cold, but those who call for the god in the African Desert, in midday of the hottest season of the year--and to the last moment of starting with a long, long night of travel before them--as they lay rolling on the burning sand, and he disdains to shed his dull influence over the eyelid, know, indeed, something of this kind of human suffering, and how dreadfully long and dreary were those nights! What signified the sight of the ten thousand orbs moving in silent mystic dance, and dressed out in soft bright fires, over the poor traveller's head! Alas! it was a mockery of his woes. . . . Four days and four nights were thus passed, without four hours of sleep. I often wonder if I could go through this again. I had an additional suffering of the eyes. I never took the veil from my face from sunrise to sunset, for had I done so, I should have had the hot sand immediately into them. We had ghiblee or simoon every day. But, thanks to Heaven, now ends the greatest of my sufferings from heat.