t is, nevertheless, lost each time
that the camel on which you ride breathes. Behold! one is brought to
earth very soon! The rancid smell which comes in regular whiffs is
sickening. So is the powerful stench of his hump when it gets heated by
the pads of the never-removed saddle.

About every two miles a few minutes' rest is given to the camels, then on
again they slowly swing forward, the nose of one being attached by a long
string to the tail rope of the preceding animal.

[Illustration: Author's Camel Men in their White Felt Coats.]

[Illustration: Camel Men saying their Prayers at Sunset.]

Twenty miles from Lawah, mud-hills covering underlying rock were reached,
and closed us in on either side. Two miles further, when it got too hot
to proceed--thermometer 148 deg. in the sun and not a thread of shade--we
halted on a white salt deposit of considerable extent. There was no water
and no fuel, and the heat was well-nigh unbearable in the middle of the
day. It was useless to pitch my tent, for in such stifling heat it is not
possible to remain under it, nor could one breathe at all if one tried to
get a little shade by screening one's self against a wall of loads which
impeded the air moving.

My camel men showed me a device which by the ignorant may be ridiculed,
but to the sensible is a great blessing when exposed to abnormally high
temperatures. The only way to protect one's self against the broiling air
is to cover one's self, head and all, leaving space to breathe, with one
or two thick blankets of wool or thick felt, of a white or light colour
preferably, white being a non-absorbent of the hot sun's rays. The
thickness of the cloth keeps the body at an enveloping temperature
slightly above the temperature of the body itself (even when with high
fever seldom more than 104 deg.), and therefore a cooler temperature than
outside the blankets, when it is frequently 148 deg. sometimes 150 deg. and even
more. By contrast this seems quite cool. It is, in other words, a similar
process to that used by us in summer to maintain ice from melting.

In Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Arabia, the people who are much exposed to
the rays of the hot sun in deserts always wear extremely thick woollen
clothing, or bernouses; and in Persia the camel men of the desert, as we
have seen, possess thick white felt coats in which they wrap themselves,
head and all, during the hot hours of the day. The Italians, too, seem to
have been fully a