VARIATIONS OF TEMPERATURE, the alert, and would never let us get nearer than four hundred yards. And so we never even fired at it.

I don't think I was ever so hot in my life. My clothes were literally saturated with perspiration ; I sat under the shade of a tree, while I took off my things, and dried them in the sun. We never felt any ill effects from the heat, although constantly taking violent exercise during the hottest hours of the day ; in fact, we were always better when camping out, shooting in the wilds, than when stopping in towns where there was very little inducement to take exercise. Taking plenty of exercise is the only way to keep well in a very hot climate. Although we never feared the sun, we always treated it with proper respect ; our pith helmets were the very thickest that could be bought ; mine, an immensely thick one, I had got four years previously at Benares, served me for two winters in the Soudan. We wore besides, down our spines, thick pads made of cotton-wadding quilted, a good inch or more thick ; these were buttoned into our coats.

The days were mtensely hot, and very dry. I have seen as many as thirty-five degrees difference between the wet and dry bulb ; for some hours every day the thermometer would range from 85° to 95° in the shade, usually nearer the latter than the former temperature. I had a thermometer made expressly by Casella of Holborn, for testing the heat of the sun's rays, which, like all my thermometers, had been corrected at Kew; and I have seen it rise during the day to 164° Fahrenheit, the usual maximum being from 150° to 158°. The nights were very cold, especially in the early mornings. After dinner, in the Mareb, we frequently liked to sit round a blazing fire. About dawn I have seen the thermometer go down to 37°, and night after night it would descend to 42° or 50°. We found these cold nights most agreeable, bracing us up as they did to endure the heat of