78 WITH THE CAMEL CORPS UP THE NILE, in many cases from an expanse of bare sand, and seldom connected together. Where the tracks led close to any of these hills, there were scrubby mimosa shrubs, and long yellow grass ; in more favoured parts the mimosa trees rose to a height of ten or twelve feet, showing there must be subsoil water nearly throughout the desert.

Day broke towards five o'clock, and at six the rtveilti bugle was received with ironical cheers.

About an hour and a half afterwards we crossed a hard, cracked mud plain, up a slope into a khor, between two ranges of hills. As trees abounded, though no water was visible, we halted at 8.30, posted a few vedettes and sentries, and after a hearty breakfast went fast asleep till the midday heat and flies woke us up again. How flies and insects of sorts manage to exist in the Desert was always a puzzle to me. I always imagined that insects required a certain amount of dampness, but no the common or garden fly was as much at home on the driest slopes of the Bayuda Desert as in a lodging-house kitchen in England.