OUR MESS-HUT. 187 built, plenty of room between the huts, and well laid out, with extra big huts for the chief man, the school, and the assembly-room really highly civilised. The amount of green-stuff brought back one would have thought ample for the camels ; but they wolfed it up and asked for more. That they needed it badly was plainly shown by the state of their bodies ; in several cases they were in such a terrible state that their ribs literally came through their skin, and became brightly polished by the friction of the baggage-saddles.

Up in our fort we were fairly comfortable the three huts at the angles were allotted as mess hut, guard-room, and store-room respectively. The former proprietor of the mess hut had kindly left his double angareb in it, and this served us for a table ; in the tiny enclosure outside all the officers lived, each provided with his angareb, and at night all the men slept in the remaining portion of the fort. There was so little room over, that it was a blessing having twenty-five men on outpost every night, and when a gun and its attendant gunners were sent up, it