Chap. XXXII. MAGA' DISTRICT. 
359 
the sheikh, Mohammed el K&nemi, having been once 
encamped in its neighbourhood. At a rather early 
hour we halted for the heat of the day in a village 
called Menoway, where an old decrepit Shuwa from 
U'da, led by his equally aged and faithful better half, 
came to me in quest of medicine for his infirmities. 
To my great vexation, a contribution of several fowls 
was laid by my companions upon the villagers for my 
benefit ; and I had to console an old blind man, who 
stumbled about in desperate search after his cherished 
hen. There was a numerous herd of cattle just being 
watered at the two wells of the village. 
Starting again in the afternoon, we reached one of 
the hamlets forming the district Magd just in time to 
avoid the drenching of a violent storm which broke 
forth in the evening. But the lanes formed by the 
fences of the yards were so narrow that we had the 
greatest difficulty in making our camels pass through 
them — an inconvenience which the traveller expe- 
riences very often in these countries, where the camel 
is not the indigenous and ordinary beast of burden. 
The well here was nine fathoms deep. 
Starting tolerably early, we reached Monday 
after two miles an extensive firki, the June 2nd. 
black boggy soil of which, now dry, showed a great 
many footprints of the giraffe. This I thought re- 
markable at the moment, but still more so when, in 
the course of my travels, I became aware how very 
rarely this animal, which roams over the extensive 
and thinly-inhabited plains on the border of Negro- 
A A 4 
