436 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. Chap. LXXXV. 
from our starting-point. About ten miles beyond we 
encamped, and reached the next morning, after a 
march of ten miles more, over a beautiful gravelly 
flat, and crossing the track of a small caravan of 
asses coming from Brabu, the beginning of the oasis 
of Siggedim, stretching out at the western foot of a 
considerable mountain group, the direction of which 
is from east to west, and well wooded with diim- 
palms, date trees, and with gerredh, or Mimosa 
Nilotica. The ground, which is richly overgrown with 
sebot, in several places shows an incrustation of 
salt. We halted, for the mid-day hours, a little more 
than a mile further on, near the well, as we could 
not afford to make any long stay here. The place was 
at present quite deserted, but I was told that about 
a month later in the season people occasionally take 
up their temporary residence here, and a few isolated 
stone dwellings on a projecting cliff, testified to the 
occasional presence of settlers. 
From hence we reached, in an afternoon's and a 
long morning's march, of altogether nearly thirty-four 
miles, the shallow vale of Jehdya (Denham's Izhya) 
or Yat. We were in a sad state, as, besides being 
exhausted by fatigue, we were almost totally blinded 
by the glare of the sand in the heat of the day. A 
smaller strip of vegetation on the west side of the 
rocky eminences which dotted this country, had already 
some time previously led us to hope that we had 
reached the end of our march ; but when at length 
we had gained the spot, we found the vale, with its 
