.'CH. XVII.] An Oasis, 37 



it. It was bitterly cold in spite of all our cloaks 

 ^nd wraps, and we were chilled to the bone. Thus 

 we struggled on for about ten miles, when we came 

 to the head of the valley, where there stood the 

 Tuins of a tower ; and here we again hit upon the 

 €aravan road, and, immediately afterwards, on ]\Io- 

 hammed, who had been all over the country looking- 

 for us and, by his account, must have ridden some- 

 thing like forty miles. His white mare looked as if 

 what he said Avas true. He told us that the hills to 

 our right were the Jebel Amiir, noted for robbers, 

 and wished us to push on to Arak, another village 

 some way in front of us, but we have had enough of 

 struggling against the wind for to-day, and having 

 come to a place where there is sufficient shelter, we 

 have stopped. It is horribly cold, and the poor 

 beasts will have a sad night of it. 



March 29. — A good watch was kept all night by 

 Mohammed and Ghanim, who never seems to sleep 

 except sometimes on one of the camels in the day- 

 time, and we made an early start, the wind less 

 violent than yesterday, and no longer in our faces. 

 At twelve we got to Arak. Like Sokhne, it is 

 a wretched little place, containing perhaps fifty 

 houses, and surrounded by a mud wall, which looks 

 a,s if a man determined to get in might easily push 

 it down. Arak's raison d'etre appears in a spring of 

 indifferent water, sufficiently abundant to irriga.te 

 some dozen acres of land, now green with barley. 

 It would seem, according to Mohammed, that there 



