OVERLAND ROUTE TO INDIA. 249 



You could see nothing for them to eat, but no doubt they find 

 pasture." 



After eighteen hours of desert journeying, the travellers 

 reached Suez, where, in the cool of the evening, at low water, 

 Dr. Harvey took a stroll on the yellow sands of the sea-shore. 

 Scooping np some handfuls of shelly sand, he found it to con- 

 tain numerous small shells, but chiefly of one species, Ceri- 

 thium. No seaweeds were visible .on the beach. He gladly 

 left the scorching heat of Suez to embark on the Bed Sea for 

 Aden, with the singular appearance of which he was much 

 struck. " Fancy," he says, " an isolated group of extinct 

 craters, their mountain-sides all peaked, and cleft, and air-worn, 

 with scarcely a green thing to cover their cindery faces ; the 

 group traversed by excellent roads, and inhabited by hundreds 

 of black and half-naked Arabs and Africans ; the town in the 

 bottom of a crater, the sides of which, all round, form a fortress 

 nearly as strong as Gibraltar. All this placed under a fierce 

 sky, and rarely visited by raindrops, the water nevertheless 

 (little as it is) not badly tasted." 



Even in a spot so unpromising, a search for plants was not 

 forgotten. They landed two hours before dark, and while his 

 companions were choosing horses and " dilly-dallying," he 

 " strolled off for half an hour behind the hotel, and picked up a 

 tolerable bundle of plants, among which were several curious 

 forms of the caper family, and a handsome shrub called Cadaba." 

 He then joined his companions in a ride along the sea-shore, 

 passing through a defile on the way, where, near the entrance 

 to a fortress, some Arabs sat with pitchers of dirty and tepid 

 water. He says, " My friend and I gladly paid them threepence 

 for a drink, our throats being dry and our palates unsqueamish. 

 It was about as muddy as if taken from a roadside pool, but we 

 swallowed our dignity and mother earth with it. Our ride 

 home was in the dark, save the brilliant stars of Arabia over- 

 head. I slept on shore (not much sleep from noise, heat, and 

 lying in an open verandah lobby), and at daybreak set out to 

 look for more botanising. I got little except on the seashore, 

 where I picked up Paclina pavonia, an Ectocarpus, and a few 

 shells. But I must," he ends, "cry a truce to Aden, as the 

 world has since been moving too quickly, while my letter lags 

 behind." 



