of the Desert of Sinai and of the Holy Land. Ill 



and we met it far north in Palestine ; but it seemed to become 

 scarcer as we worked northwards from Jerusalem. Where- 

 ever we pitched our tents in the desert, whether on a sandy 

 plain or almost hidden among those towering mountains, an 

 assemblage of Egyjatian Vultures were certain to be "the very 

 first living things we saw in the early morning, and the last 

 birds to take leave of us at night. They would hover around 

 us all day, but generally took care to keep out of danger. I 

 verily believe that several individual birds followed us all the 

 way from the outskirts of Suez until we arrived at the borders 

 of Hebron, a space of nearly one month. They appeared to 

 eat any thing, from a defunct camel to the leg-bone of a 

 chicken ; and they seemed to delight in depredations among 

 the burial-grounds of the Arabs. A child was buried on 

 April 7th at a little village called Niikhl, in the very centre 

 of the desert, and halfway from Jerusalem to the convent at 

 Sinai ; and early the next morning I happened to leave my 

 tent, which was pitched close to the grave-yard, if such it 

 could be called, and the sight that met my eyes was truly 

 sickening. The newly -buried corpse was torn up and exposed 

 to view, and a whole host of Eagles, Buzzards, and Ravens 

 were enjoying this horrible feast; but by far the greatest pro- 

 portion of the loathsome partakers of this cannibal meal 

 were the Egyptian Vultures. This grave-yard was a loath- 

 some spectacle — many, indeed most of the graves torn open, 

 human bones, menu's and women's skulls, bits of hair, and the 

 clothes of the dead, scattered about in all directions. All at- 

 tempts to scare away the Vultures were utterly ineffectual. 

 I shot one of them (a very old male bird if one may judge 

 from its plumage) as it was hovering over the burying- ground ; 

 and a general scramble of the inhabitants of Nukhl took place 

 as the bird was seen to fall. I heard from my dragoman that 

 the fellow that got this bird eat it the same evening. 



4. Aquila pennata (Gm.). Booted Eagle. 



We met with one single pair in the desert on the 13th of 

 April, about seventy miles due south of Edh Dohorigeh. 

 There were more Quail and Sand-Grouse on our line of march 



