The extensive, and very thick forest, which had reached without interruption all the way from Tcherkin, ended, here at Imgellalib. The country is perfectly flat, and hath very little water. The forest, however, though thick, afforded no sort of shade; the hunters, for the sake of their sport, and the Arabs, for destroying the flies, having set fire to all the dry grass and shrubs, which, passing with great rapidity, in the direction of the wood from east to west, though it had not time enough to destroy the trees, did yet wither, and occasion every leaf that was upon them to fall, unless in those spaces where villages had been, and where water was. In such spots a number of large spreading trees remained full of foliage, which, from their great height, and being cleared of underwood, continued in full verdure, loaded with large, projecting, and exuberant branches. But, even here, the pleasure that their shade afforded was very temporary, so as to allow us no time for enjoyment. The sun, so near the zenith, changed his azimuth so rapidly, that every few minutes I was obliged to change the carpet on which I lay round the trunk of the tree, to which I had fled, for shelter; and, though I lay down to sleep, perfectly skreened by the trunk, or branches, I was presently awakened by the violent rays of a scorching sun, the shade having passed beyond me; and this was particularly incommodious, when the trees, under which we placed ourselves, were of the thorny kind, very common in those forests. The thorns, being all scattered round the trunk upon the ground, made either changing-place, or lying, equally uneasy; so that often, however averse we were to fatigue, with the effects of the simoom, we found, that, pitching the head of our tent, and sometimes the whole of it, was the only possible means of securing a permanent protection from the sun's oppressive heat. In all other places, though we had travelled constantly in forests, we never met with a tree that could shade us for a moment, the fire having deprived them of all their leaves. ---------------- _Latè tibi gurgite rupto Ambitur nigris Meroë fœcunda colonis, Læta comis hebeni; quæ quamvis arbore multâ Frondeat, æstatem nullâ sibi mitigat umbrâ, Linea tam rectum mundi ferit illa leonem._ LUCAN.