CHAPTER XXIII 



Sandy plains — The entomologists' opportunity and a picture for an artist — 

 Traces of an oryx — God-laid and man-laid stones — Beautiful pebbles 

 — A salt-well and niggardly Nature — A long-deferred bath — Legia and 

 its beautiful colour— A prehistoric ruin— We are past the nightmare 

 country — My guide is an ancient smuggler — A good dinner at last — 

 Rats on the menu — My bed a hole in the sand — The end of my 

 journeyings. 



I TOOK thirteen police with me. I was going into the 

 beat of the Bedaiat (Black Arabs), who spend their 

 leisure raiding. We took water for four days, and 

 camel food for ten. I determined to go due west for 

 a hundred miles, and then, trusting to luck, to the 

 hope that my men would recognise the country, and 

 to the bearing of the oasis of Legia, taken from 

 I D.W.O., No. 1856, I 14,000,000 map, to make over 

 that oasis for Delgo on the Nile. 



The recent (1907) disaster in that desert, in which 

 two score of the Camel Corps and an officer were lost, 

 has convinced me how fortunate I was in my guides. 

 The details of that disaster are too dreadful. Suffice 

 it to say that the shrivelled corpses of the officer and a 

 man were found with their teeth deeply imbedded in 

 the sapless stems of a desert shrub. 



To get out of the depression, about four miles in 

 diameter, which forms the oasis, we had to cross a 



ridge somewhat similar to that by which we had 



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