steep hills. Specks of bright light stood out against the distant
background, and we presently found that the moonlight was glinting on
spear heads, and soon a line of camels crept toward us, and marching
as escort was a small guard of Hadendowahs, with spear and shield.

We found the convoy to be a detachment of a caravan of 160 camel loads
of stores sent from Suakim to Berber by that enterprising Greek,
Angelo, of the former town. They had been on the road already eight
days, having to move cautiously owing to rumors of dervish activity,
but had arrived so far safely. We bivouacked for several hours in the
Wadi of Salalat, which was quite parklike with its fine growth of sunt
trees.

When we had crossed the frontier between Bisheren and Hadendowah
country we were in comparative safety regarding any molestation by the
natives, for we were escorted by the son of the sheikh of one of the
subtribes of the latter country. At all events, I must have been a
sore temptation for any evil disposed Fuzzy Wuzzy; for, owing to my
camel being badly galled by an ill-fitting saddle, I would find myself
for many hours entirely alone picking my way by the light of the moon,
the poor brute I was riding not being able to keep pace with the rest.
All the following day our route lay over stony plains of a bolder type
than any we had yet seen, and when in the heart of the Hadendowah
Hills we came suddenly upon a scene in its weirdness the most
extraordinary and most appallingly grand I had ever seen. A huge
wilderness lay before us like the dry bed of a vast ocean, whose
waters by some subterranean convulsion had been sucked into the bowels
of the earth, leaving in its whirling eddies the debris of submarine
mountains heaped up in rugged confusion or scattered over its sandy
bottom. Porphyry and black granite bowlders, in every conceivable form
and size, lay strewn over the plain. Sometimes so fantastic did their
shapes become that the least imaginative of our party could picture
the gigantic ruins of some mighty citadel, with its ramparts, bastions
and towering castle. For many hours we were traversing this weird and
desolate valley, and when the sun cast long shadows across our track
as he sank to rest, his ruddy light falling upon the dark bowlders,
polished with the sand storms of thousands of years, stray pieces of
red granite would catch his rosy glint, and sparkle like giant rubies
in a setting of black pearls.

We found more life