Sometimes our caravan would pass a camel’s skeleton bleached by the torrid sun. When a camel grows footsore or breaks down, there is no alternative: the poor beast is left to die in the wilderness. The second day we passed villages and cultivated fields; that night we spread our blankets on the soft sand, surrounded by thousands of sheep and goats, driven in by Bedouin lasses from their mountain pastures. Even among these shepherds we found readers, and the colporteur sold books wherever the camels halted long enough to strike a bargain. It was late on Wednesday, May 23d, that we entered the narrow pass of Hitta. Our guides preceded, mounted, but with rifles loaded and cocked; then followed the baggage camel, to which mine was “towed,” and in similar fashion my companion on the milch camel followed by its two colts. We were not troubled with the heat at night, but during the day it was intense, and it was refreshing to come to an oasis (common in this part of Oman) where water burst from a big spring, and trees and flowers grew in luxury. In the mountainous parts of Oman the roads run almost invariably along sandy watercourses or deep, rocky ravines. Tamarisks, oleanders, euphorbias, and acacias are the most common trees and shrubs. Where the country appears almost barren, we were surprised to find a considerable population of shepherds and goatherds. Their dwellings are mere oval shanties constructed of boulders or rocks. In the fertile valleys the population always centres in villages, and scarcely ever is a dwelling found at any distance from this common centre. Just at the top of the pass of Hitta is the village ’Ajeeb rightly named “wonderful.” The view down the mountains over the fertile stretch of coast called the Batinah and out over the boundless Indian Ocean was grand. We descended to the sea, and the turbulent mountain stream, so cold to our bare feet as we waded it in the early dawn, dwindled to a brook, and at last ebbed away along the beach a tiny stream of fresh water. These perennial streams are the secret of a coast fertile for nearly a hundred and fifty miles.