Yusuf has been reading an Arabic book, which I at first thought was some commentary on the Koran; but to-day I was undeceived.  He related what he read; it reminded me of Gulliver’s Travels.  A tall man walks through the sea, cooks fish in the sun, and destroys a whole town, whose inhabitants had insulted him, by the same means that our comparative giant saved the palace of Lilliput from conflagration.

This evening it was announced as an event that the Zintanah, a servant of the Germans, was going to Tripoli, having resolved to return home.  Some said one thing about him, some another; but most, “He’s afraid of the fever of Mourzuk.”  The fellow came afterwards to me, asking for letters to Tripoli.  I told him to go about his business; that he was a man of words and had no heart, otherwise he would continue with us to Mourzuk.  I wished to discourage such acts of desertion, for they produce always a bad effect.  My German companions seemed glad to get rid of him.

We started again on Sunday morning (the 28th).  This was our first day of sand.  We had almost forgotten that there was such a thing as sand in the desert; but we shall have two days more of the same kind of travelling, to keep us in mind of this unpleasant truth.  However, we were glad enough to leave Edree.  Our marabout, comparing this place with El-Wady, for which we are now journeying, says, “Edree is like a jackass; El-Wady is like a camel!” Yusuf calls Edree “the city of camel-bugs.”  These vermin are the leeches of the camels.  During the morning we passed two or three forests of palms, and afterwards traversed a flat valley, where was a little herbage.  The people said; “There is no tareek (track):  the tareek is in our heads.”  Bou Keta noted the route in many parts by the presence of camels’ dung; but the shape of the sand-hills in these parts seems to be perfectly familiar to these men.  We saw one or two lizards, but no birds or other signs of life, except two brown-black Fezzanees, trudging over the desert.

At four in the afternoon, after a day of hot wind, we encamped in Wady Guber, where there is water two or three feet below the surface; and a small forest of palms belonging to our camel-drivers, having descended to them in small groups from their grandfathers.

Next day (29th) we again went on over the sand, which extends beyond Ghadamez and Souf, to the west, and even to Egypt on the east.  It is met at different points by the khafilahs, and crossed in different numbers of days.  We found it very hard work to cross it, and understood why, in these parts, the words raml, sand, and war, difficult, have become convertible terms.  Bou Keta had considerable trouble in keeping to the route, being reduced to depend chiefly on the camels’ dung, which rolls about the surface of the sand.  Here and there was a patch of coarse herbage, scattered like black spots on the bright, white surface.  Every object was very much magnified at a little distance; I saw what seemed to me to be a horse on the top of one of the hills, but on drawing near it proved to be our own greyhound bitch smelling the hot air.