278 MARINE BIOLOGY OF THE SUDANESE RED SEA. 
amounting in all to perhaps two months of the year, of the weather called by 
the natives *‘hurir.” The morning opens witha very light land breeze which 
soon dies away to a dead calm. It is hot half an hour after sunrise, and 
becomes unbearably so by 8 a.m., at which time the temperature approaches 
100° F. Then comes the wind off land, a few premonitory puffs and in half 
an hour a gale carrying sand and dust, heated as if by fire, the temperature 
rising to 105° F., to 110° F. or even 115° F. The air is often so thick with 
sand that one cannot see 100 yards; nose, ears and eyes are filled, and teeth 
coated, with dust, and heaps of sand, like snow-drifts, accumulate to windward 
of any obstruction. For instance, a storm buried a pile of boxes in my store 
to such an extent that it took three men four days to dig them out and much 
more labour still to re-level the store yard. After a fence of roofing zine was 
put'up to prevent a repetition of this, another storm accumulated drifts on its 
windward side which I estimate at several tons of sand to each linear yard of 
fencing. The general level of the ground round my buildings and fences has 
been raised six inches to a foot in about two years. This wind generally 
blows till shortly before noon, but may continue till 4 p.m. In the former 
case it ceases suddenly, there is a dead calm for half an hour or so, the 
temperature drops to 90° F., and a sudden strong damp wind blows in from 
the sea, the dampness almost neutralising the fall of temperature so far as 
one’s sensation of heat is concerned. 
Sometimes this return wind comes in during the morning, the time that 
“hurdir” usually blows, the inference drawn by the natives, and I think 
rightly, being that the westerly hot wind is then blowing ata point further 
down the coast. The winds are apparently small cyclones, which are very 
local and do not extend far to sea. I remember once, while exploring a part 
of the barrier system about five miles from land, my schooner was picking its 
way among the reefs with the lightest of breezes, while shorewards some 
native sambtiks were flying before a gale, and a vast cloud of sand blotted out 
the mountains from view. It would be very interesting to know what is 
happening at the bases of the mountains and in the upper air at these times. 
These conditions obtain much more frequently at Port Sudan and Suakin, 
though the wind does not so often carry sand. North of Dongonab they are 
less frequent, being, according to the natives, absent altogether only a hundred 
miles away. 
We have thus alternations of extreme dry heat and of dampness on one day. 
Exceedingly damp weather is the characteristic of the late summer and 
autumn, and of intervals of a few days at a time during the winter. Such 
weather is nearly as uncomfortable as extreme heat, even the natives become 
listless and depressed by it. The dews are very heavy, one’s bedding, if left 
uncovered on the roof (the only sleeping-place during these sultry nights), 
becomes soaking wet, and water literally runs from clothing that has once 
