The Arabs feed all their flocks upon the branches of trees; no beast in this country eats grass. When therefore the water is dried up, and they can no longer stay, they set fire to the woods, and to the dry grass below it. The flame runs under the trees, scorches the leaves and new wood, without consuming the body of the tree. After the tropical rains begin, the vegetation immediately returns; the springs increase, the rivers run, and the pools are filled with water. All sorts of verdure being now in the greatest luxuriancy, the Arabs revisit their former stations. This conflagration is performed at two seasons; the first, by the Shangalla and hunters on the southern parts of this woody country, begins in the month of October, on the return of the sun, the circumstances of which I have already mentioned; the latter, which happens in March, and lasts all April, besides providing future sustenance for their flocks, is likewise intended to prevent, at least to diminish, the ravages of the fly; a plague of the most extraordinary kind, already described. We left Quaicha a little before four in the morning of the 19th of March, and at half an hour past five we came to Jibbel Achmar, a small mountain, or rather mount; for it is of a very regular form, and not above 300 feet high, but covered with green grass to the top. What has given it the name of Jibbel Achmar, or the Red Mountain, I know not. All the country is of red earth about it; but as it hath much grass, it should be called[23] the Green Mountain, in the middle of the red country; though there is nothing more vague or undetermined than the language of the Arabs, when they speak of colours. This hill, surrounded with impenetrable woods, is in the beginning of autumn the rendezvous of the Arabs Daveina, when there is water; at which time the rhinoceros and many sorts of beasts, crowd hither; tho' few elephants, but they are those of the largest kind, mostly males; so that the Arabs make this a favourite station, after the grass is burnt, especially the young part of them, who are hunters. We reached Imserrha at half past eleven, the water being about half a mile distant to the S. W. The wells are situated upon a small ridge that runs nearly east and west. At one extremity of this is a small-pointed mountain, upon which was formerly a village belonging to the Arabs, called Jehaina, now totally destroyed by the hunting parties of the Daveina, the great tyrants of this country, who, together with the scarcity of water, are the principal causes that this whole territory is desolate. For though the soil is sandy and improper for agriculture, yet it is thickly overgrown with trees; and were the places where water is found sufficiently flocked with inhabitants, great numbers of cattle might be pastured here, every species of which live upon the leaves and the young branches of trees, even on spots where grass is abundant.