26 A PITEOUS TALE.

driven out to feed at break of day. To accomplish more in the day than eight hours, means getting up at a more than abnormally early hour, and continually hustling the camel drivers to bring in their camels ; or, it means pitching your tents in darkness, and getting dinner very late. In eight hours the caravan will accomplish twenty miles, and the same distance can be got over on fair hygeens in about four or five.

The start should be made in advance of the baggage-camels, so as to allow plenty of time for shooting, and for the midday halt.

Besides the discomfort to the traveller if camels are constantly pressed to do more than eight hours, they do not get sufficient time to feed ; as, when on the march, all they can get, of course, is a mouthful of food snatched now and then as they are travelling, and they otigJit to have time given them to feed morning and evening.

The country gradually became less green, as we augmented the distance between us and the sea ; heavy clouds hung about, the air was close and sultry, and we had some heavy showers. We wound through some rocky hillocks before pitching our tents, and finally encamped in the sandy bed of a kJior, at a place called Siterabb, near the first water out from Souakim, and where there were a few huts belonging to the telegraphpeople.

The following morning, a very wretched-looking old woman came to us with a piteous tale of how she had been robbed of her all,— a few dollars she had saved,— by the telegraph-people.

I gave her a dollar, and her joy was unbounded: she insisted not only on kissing my hand, but my boots ; and I began to feel that there was such a thing as excess of gratitude, — at any rate, that it could be expressed in too demonstrative a manner.