formerly almost burnt the feet of men and animals, were slightly encrusted with a light glittering mantle of hoar-frost in the shaded places, under the big leguminous bushes, for that morning Herr Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit had fallen to 28 degrees.  My old slabbed well had got filled up with sand, and it was evident that many natives had visited the place since I left on the 24th of March, 103 days ago.  We managed to water our camels, as they lay down on the top of the well, and stretched their long necks down into it.  We then quietly waited till long past midday for the caravan to come up.  We had nothing to do, and nothing to eat; we could not dig out the well, for we had no shovel.  At last Mr. Tietkens got alarmed at the non-arrival of the party, and he went back to the camp, taking my riding-camel with him, as she would not remain quiet by herself.  I remained there mighty hungry, and made some black smoke to endeavour to attract any natives that might be in the neighbourhood.  I have before remarked that the natives can make different coloured smokes, of different form, and make them ascend in different ways, each having a separate meaning:  hurried alarm, and signal fires are made to throw up black and white smokes.  No signals were returned, and I sat upon a sandhill, like Patience on a monument, and thought of the line, “That sitting alone with my conscience, is judgment sufficient for me.”  I could not perceive any dust or sand of the approaching caravan; darkness began to creep over this solitary place and its more solitary occupant.  I thought I had better sleep, though I had no bedding, to pass the time away till morning.  I coiled myself up under a bush and fell into one of those extraordinary waking dreams which occasionally descend upon imaginative mortals, when we know that we are alive, and yet we think we are dead; when a confused jumble of ideas sets the mind “peering back into the vistas of the memories of yore,” and yet also foreshadowing the images of future things upon the quivering curtains of the mental eye.  At such a time the imagination can revel only in the marvellous, the mysterious, and the mythical.  The forms of those we love are idealised and spiritualised into angelic shapes.  The faces of those we have forgotten long, or else perchance have lost, once more return, seraphic from the realms of light.  The lovely forms and winning graces of children gone, the witching eyes and alluring smiles of women we have loved, the beautiful countenances of beloved and admired youth, once more we seem to see; the youthful hands we have clasped so often in love and friendship in our own, once more we seem to press, unchanged by time, unchanged by fate, beckoning to us lovingly to follow them, still trying with loving caress and youthful smiles to lead us to their shadowy world beyond.  O youth, beautiful and undying, the sage’s dream, the poet’s song, all that is loving and lovely, is centred still in thee!  O lovely youth, with thine arrowy form, and slender hands, thy pearly teeth, and saintly smile, thy pleading eyes and radiant hair; all, all must worship thee.  And if in waking hours and daily toil we cannot always greet thee, yet in our dreams you are our own.  As the poet says:—­