dly
to-day, and no young houris have visited us. Many of the men have
climbed into trees in the immediate neighbourhood of the camp, not
being allowed in, and are continually peering down at us and our
doings, and reporting all our movements to their associates. At our
meal-times they seem especially watchful, and anxious to discover what
it is we eat, and where it comes from. Some come occasionally creeping
nearer to our shady home for a more extensive view. Wistfully gazing
they come--

"And they linger a minute,
Like those lost souls who wait,
Viewing, through heaven's gate,
Angels within it."

By the morning of the following day I was very glad to find that the
natives had all departed. Saleh and Tommy were away after the camels,
and had been absent so many hours that I was afraid these people might
have unhobbled the camels and driven them off, or else attacked the
two who were after them. We waited, therefore, for their return in
great anxiety, hour after hour. As they only took one gun besides
their revolvers, I was afraid they might not be able to sustain an
attack, if the natives set upon them. After the middle of the day they
turned up, camels and all, which put an end to our fears.

We departed from Mount Gould late in the day, and travelled up the
creek our camp was on, and saw several small ponds of clear
rain-water, but at the spot where we camped, after travelling fifteen
miles, there was none. Mount Gould bore south 56 degrees west from
camp. The travelling for about twenty miles up the creek was pretty
good. At twenty-seven miles we came to the junction with another
creek, where a fine permanent rocky pool of fresh water, with some
good-sized fish in it, exists. I named this fine watering-place
Saleh's Fish-ponds, after my Afghan camel-driver, who was really a
first-rate fellow, without a lazy bone in his body. The greatest
requirement of a camel caravan, is some one to keep the saddles in
repair, and so avert sore backs. Saleh used to do this admirably, and
many times in the deserts and elsewhere I have known him to pass half
the night at this sort of work. The management of the camels, after
one learns the art, is simple enough; they are much easier to work
than a mob of pack-horses; but keeping the saddles right is a task of
the hardest nature. In consequence of Saleh's looking after ours so
well, we never had any trouble with sore-backed camels, thus escaping
a misfortune which