Darros, and retraced his steps after an absence of eight months.  He brought back with him a quantity of valuable commodities, “the like of which no one had ever previously brought back.”  He was not inclined to regain his country by the ordinary route:  he pushed boldly into the narrow wadys which furrow the territory of the people of Iritit, and emerged upon the region of Situ, in the neighbourhood of the cataract, by paths in which no official traveller who had visited the Amamit had up to this time dared to travel.  A third expedition which started out a few years later brought him into regions still less frequented.  It set out by the Oasis route, proceeded towards the Amamit, and found the country in an uproar.  The sheikhs had convoked their tribes, and were making preparations to attack the Timihu “towards the west corner of the heaven,” in that region where stand the pillars which support the iron firmament at the setting sun.  The Timihu were probably Berbers by race and language.  Their tribes, coming from beyond the Sahara, wandered across the frightful solitudes which bound the Nile Valley on the west.  The Egyptians had constantly to keep a sharp look out for them, and to take precautions against their incursions; having for a long time acted only on the defensive, they at length took the offensive, and decided, not without religious misgivings, to pursue them to their retreats.  As the inhabitants of Mendes and of Busiris had relegated the abode of their departed to the recesses of the impenetrable marshes of the Delta, so those of Siut and Thinis had at first believed that the souls of the deceased sought a home beyond the sands:  the good jackal Anubis acted as their guide, through the gorge of the Cleft or through the gate of the Oven, to the green islands scattered over the desert, where the blessed dwelt in peace at a convenient distance from their native cities and their tombs.  They constituted, as we know, a singular folk, those uiti whose members dwelt in coffins, and who had put on the swaddling clothes of the dead; the Egyptians called the Oasis which they had colonised, the land of the shrouded, or of mummies, uit, and the name continued to designate it long after the advance of geographical knowledge had removed this paradise further towards the west.  The Oases fell one after the other into the hands of frontier princes—­that of Bahnesa coming under the dominion of the lord of Oxyrrhynchus, that of Dakhel under the lords of Thinis.  The Nubians of Amamit had relations, probably, with the Timihu, who owned the Oasis of Dush—­a prolongation of that of Dakhel, on the parallel of Elephantine.  Hirkhuf accompanied the expedition to the Amamit, succeeded in establishing peace among the rival tribes, and persuaded them “to worship all the gods of Pharaoh:”  he afterwards reconciled the Iritit, Amamit, and Uauait, who lived in a state of perpetual hostility to each other, explored their valleys, and collected from them such quantities of incense, ebony, ivory, and skins that three hundred asses were required for their transport.