uded towns are called
Waringab, and promise shortly to become extinct. In this Western
Ghareeah there are twenty heads of families, but very few
children,--scarce sixty souls altogether; and the population of the
other place, which gives itself airs of metropolitan importance, is not
more than double. How they have not abandoned the place long ago to
jackals and hawks is a mystery. They do not possess a single camel; only
two or three asses and some flocks of sheep; and depend, in a great
measure, on chance profits from caravans, for their valley often only
affords provision for a couple of months or so. At intervals, it is
true, when there has been much rain, they sell barley in the
neighbouring valleys; but this season has been a dry one, and the crop
has consequently fallen short. When they have no barley, they say, they
eat dates; and when the dates are out, they fast--a long, continual
fast--and famine takes them off one by one. The melancholy remnant
preserve traditions of prosperity in comparatively recent times.
Notwithstanding their miserable condition, however, these wretched
people are drained by taxation of thirty mahboubs per annum--so many
drops of blood! The eastern village pays in proportion. Possibly in a
few years this cluster of wadys may be abandoned to chance Arab
visitors, so that the starting-point for the traverse of the Hamadah
will be removed farther back, perhaps to Mizdah. There is no life in the
civilisation which claims lordship over these countries unfriended by
nature. The only object of those who wield paramount authority over them
seems to be to extract money in the most vexatious and expeditious
manner.

I purchased of the people of Ghareeah a greyhound bitch for four
Tunisian piastres, so that we may now expect some hares and gazelles. In
returning to the encampment I observed the phenomenon of a column of
dust carried into the heavens in a spiral form by the wind, whilst all
around was perfectly calm. Such columns are not of so frequent
occurrence in the desert as is imagined, but from time to time, as in
this instance, are seen.

The evening was spent in making arrangements with Dr. Barth and Dr.
Overweg, who had agreed to traverse the Hamadah by day, whilst I was to
follow by night, with the blacks. Next morning, accordingly, the caravan
separated into two portions, and my companions rode slowly away over the
burning desert.

This important day could not be allowed to pass by m