200 LIFE WITH THE HAMRAN ARABS. 



track for more than a mile afterwards, but we were then 

 obliged to give up the hunt owing to our great distance 

 from home. 



Our present pretty encampment has its drawbacks, 

 which we found to our cost last night, for whilst the 

 white ants were doing their utmost to devour our 

 goods, including the tent-pole, the mosquitoes swarmed 

 about us like bees intent on doing their best to devour 

 us if we had obliged them by falling asleep. Careful 

 as our friends were to warn us of the risks to life from 

 wild beasts, natives, or disease, they omitted to mention 

 the slow devouring process of the insect world ; and 

 though of varieties there seems to be a legion, we find 

 there is one property common to them all, that of wishing 

 to taste the blood of an Englishman and of this our 

 bodies now from head to foot tell their sad tale. 



Mosquito-curtains, cleverly adapted by Albert to our 

 beds, will defeat one great enemy here, and our old 

 system of raising everything off the ground another the 

 white ant. The red ants are almost equally numerous, 

 and though far behind their sickly-looking relations in 

 their powers of annoyance, they manage to make them- 

 selves highly objectionable in their more general voyages 

 of discovery, and often have to pay in self-destruction 

 the penalty of inquisitiveness. Even if a can of water 

 is left uncovered for a few moments, they are sure to 

 have tumbled into it in scores. Thanks to them, it is 



