I have left Doctors Barth and Overweg to take the compass-direction of this route.  To do this when with them would be useless for me, but when I leave them I must then do all the work I can.  Now, it would be only accumulating on my shoulders useless labour.  Besides, they will always do this kind of thing much better than myself.  The same observation applies to the thermometer.  It would be well, however, if I practised taking observations with them.  But we are all sufficiently worked, and can assist one another but little in these matters.

The wind has been variable for the last three days,—­in the evening, generally N.E.  In the afternoon it begins to move round, until it blows from all the points of the compass.  To-day we have hot wind or gusts of wind.  It has been very hot, 105 deg.  Fahrenheit under the tent.

Our people suffer much from their fasting.  But the Tuaricks do not fast, and seem to look with scorn upon the Moors and blacks for doing so.  Yusuf says he shall not fast when he in en route.  A camel has broken down on the road, and it is found necessary to kill it, to prevent its dying.  Hateetah has given out his decree for its sale.  The Tuaricks are to purchase half and we half of the carcase, at ten reals, or fifty Tunisian piastres.  Of our five reals the Germans take one and a half, and the Sfaxee a half.  This will make it lighter for me.  Our people made a regular feast of the camel’s flesh, some of them sitting up and gorging till midnight.  Their noise did not disturb me, for I had slept a good deal in the day.

I had done very little indeed but sleep and lie down.  We felt the heat severely at noon.  A gust of hot wind nearly carried away our tent.

The Tuaricks use spoons, and do not eat with their hands like the Arabs and Turks; but the latter pretend that the Tuaricks never wash their hands at all, whilst they, before and after eating, always take this precaution.  In saluting, the Tuaricks do not spread out the fingers much when they raise their hand, but present the palm and fingers outstretched to you.  One of these gentlemen, whom I call the noisy one, has got a poor little slave-boy, about seven years of age, who works like a man, and goes quite naked.

To-day I found a young scorpion in the canvass-case of my writing-desk; he cocked his tail in a hostile attitude, as if daring any one to touch him.  In his tail seems to be all his power, and so of all the scorpion host.  Yesterday was taken a locust:  this destructive insect is not bred in the desert.  In this bare and thirsty region there is nothing for the young ones to eat, and the old ones likewise would soon perish in the Sahara.  They are bred in the cultivated fields near the desert, or in the fertile lands of the coast, as in the neighbourhood of Mogador, where millions of the young have been seen, like so many small green buds of trees.

Dr. Overweg made an excursion to the Ghat mountains, or rather the smaller hills or offshoots from the range.  He found them sandstone, but very singularly formed or broken into huge blocks—­some like the masses which I saw on the route from Ghadamez to Ghat, with a very narrow base, on which they might turn as on a pivot.