their elders directly we halted or made a fresh advance; they probably
had an inkling of what was in store for them. After all, the world
must seem a hard and unsympathetic place when, having only known it
for two or three weeks, you are compelled to make a journey of 240
miles to keep up with your commissariat. One of these babies was only
in its eighteenth day. In spite of its tender youth the little beast
trotted by the side of its mother, refreshing itself whenever we came
to a halt with a pull from her teats, and, to the astonishment of all,
arrived in Suakim safe and sound after twelve days' marching.

To the uninitiated regarding the "grousing" of camels, I should
explain that it is a peculiar noise which comes from their long funnel
necks early or late, and for what reason it is difficult to tell.
Sometimes the sound is not unlike the bray of an ass, occasionally it
reaches the dignity of the roar of a lion with the bleating of a goat
thrown in, then as quickly changes to the solemnity of a church organ.
It is altogether so strange a sound that nothing but a phonograph
could convey any adequate idea of it. It is a thing to be heard. No
pen can properly describe it. After a long march, and when you are
preparing to relieve the brute of his load, he begins to grouse. When
he is about to start in the morning he grouses. If you hit him, he
grouses; if you pat his neck gently, he grouses; if you offer him
something to eat, he grouses; and if you twist his tail, he makes the
same extraordinary noise. The camel evidently has not a large
vocabulary, and he is compelled to express all his various sensations
in this simple manner.

The first part of our journey was monotonous enough, miles and miles
of weary sandy plains, with alternate stretches of agabas or stony
deserts, scored with shallow depressions, where torrential rains had
recently soaked into the sand, leaving a glassy, clay-like surface,
which had flaked or cracked into huge fissures under the heat of the
fierce sun. And at every few hundred yards we came to patches of
coarse camel grass, which had evidently cropped up on the coming of
the rain, and, by its present aspect, seemed to feel very sorry that
it had been induced to put in an appearance, for its sustenance was
now fast passing into vapor, and its green young life was rapidly
dying out as the sun scorched the tender shoots to the roots. But
camels thrive on this parched-up grass, and our brutes nibbl