1 8 LIFE WITH THE HAM RAN ARABS. 



CHAPTER II. 



Dec. 29. It certainly was a great luxury passing 

 the night on a comfortable couch in a darkened room, 

 excepting the proof afforded to us by two Turks, if 

 they may be taken as types of the race, that the art of 

 snoring is thoroughly understood by them. At last we 

 have commenced the desert journey, and have halted for 

 the night about eight miles from Souakim on a vast 

 sandy plain, freely studded with stunted mimosas, now 

 merely a mass of dry thorny branches, with here and 

 there the skeleton of a camel. As we arrived here our 

 hearts were gladdened with the sight of two or three 

 hundred gazelles that at once called forth the rifles, and 

 having succeeded in bagging four, which were considered 

 enough for the larder, we returned home. There w r as 

 great excitement at the time amongst our camel-men at 

 the prospect of a feast on raw gazelle, which with them 

 is considered a luxury. But unfortunately we had not 

 remembered their religious scruples about eating flesh 

 killed by the heathen, and did not let them give the 

 coup de grace the consequence of which was that some 



