THE 22nd of July was a grand trial of temper to our little party. The position of Bir Abbas exactly resembles that of El Hamra, except that the bulge of the hill-girt fiumara is at this place about two miles wide. "There are the usual stone forts and palm-leaved hovels for the troopers," stationed here to hold the place and to escort travellers, with a coffee-shed, and a hut or two, called a bazaar, but no village. The encamping ground with which the violent

was a bed of loose sand, simoom wind filled the air: not a tree or a bush was in sight; a species of hardy locust and swarms of flies were the only remnants of animal life: the

scene was a caricature of Sindh. Although we were now some hundred feet, to judge by the watershed, above the level of the sea, the mid-day sun scorched even through the tent; our frail tenement was more than once blown down, and the heat of the sand made the work of repitching it a painful Again my companions, after breakfasting, hurried to the coffee-house, and returned one after the other with dispiriting reports. Then they either quarrelled desperately about nothing, or they threw themselves on their rugs, pretending to sleep for very sulkiness. The Lady Maryam soundly rated her surly son for refusing to fill his chibouque for the twelfth time that morning with the usual religious phrases, "Ali direct thee into the right way, 0 my son!"-meaning that he was going to the bad,― and "O my calamity, thy mother is a lone woman, O Allah!"-equivalent to the European parental plaint about grey hairs being brought down in sorrow to the grave. Before noon a small caravan which followed us came in with two dead bodies, a trooper shot by the Bedouins, and an Albanian killed by sun-stroke, or the fiery wind.*

* The natives of El Hejaz assured me that in their Allahfavoured land, the Simoom never kills a man. I doubt the fact." This Arnaut's body was swollen and decomposing

INDIAN PILGRIMS PROTECTED BY THEIR POVERTY. 3

Shortly after mid-day a Cafila, travelling in an opposite direction, passed by us; it was composed chiefly of Indian pilgrims, habited in correct costume, and hurrying towards Meccah in hot haste. They had been allowed to pass unmolested, because probably a pound sterling could not have been

rapidly, the true diagnostic of death by the poison-wind. (See Ibn Batuta's voyage, "Kabul.") However, as troopers drink hard, the Arabs may still be right, the Simoom doing half the work, arrack the rest. I travelled during the months of July, August, and September, and yet never found myself inconvenienced by the "poison-wind" sufficiently to make me tie my kufiyah, Bedouin-fashion, across my mouth. At the same time I can believe that to an invalid it would be trying, and that a man almost worn out by hunger and fatigue would receive from it a coup de grace.

Niebuhr attributes the extraordinary mortality of his companions, amongst other causes, to a want of stimulants. Though these might doubtless be useful in the cold weather, or in the mountains of El-Yemen, for men habituated to them from early youth, yet nothing, I believe, would be more fatal than strong drink when travelling through the Desert in summer heat. The common beverage should be water or lemonade; the strongest stimulants coffee or tea. It is what the natives of the country do, and doubtless it is wise to take their example. The Duke of Wellington's dictum about the healthiness of India to an abstemious man does not require to be quoted. Were it more generally followed, we should have less of sun-stroke and sudden death in our Indian armies, when soldiers, fed with beef and brandy, are called out to face the violent heat.