Chap. LXXXV. VALUE OF HORSES IK THE DESERT. 437 
rich growth of herbage, very refreshing, and men as 
well as animals had an opportunity of recruiting their 
strength a little. 
The horse which the Sheikh had 2;iven me 
. ^ June 22nd. 
bemg quite lame, 1 wanted to mount the only 
one of the camels which seemed strong enough to 
carry such a burden in addition to its load, but it 
refused to rise with me, and I was thus obliged to 
mount the donkey-like nag which the sultan of S6- 
koto had given me, my servant going on foot. It is 
certainly very difficult to carry horses through this 
frightful desert with limited means, but it is of the 
utmost importance for a small party to have a horse 
or two with them, in order to scour the country to see 
whether all be right, and to make a spirited attack or 
to pursue the robbers in case of a theft having been 
committed. 
Having advanced in the course of the evening a 
little more than eighteen miles, we traversed early the 
next morning a narrow dehle enclosed between rocky 
heights on both sides, in a very stony tract of country, 
and halted, after a march of about twelve miles, at a 
little distance from the mountain group Tiggera-n- 
diimma, where the boundary is formed between Fez- 
zdn and the independent Tebu country, by a valley 
clothed with a good profusion of herbage and a few 
talha trees just in flower. From here we reached, 
after a march of sixteen miles more, the well of Md- 
faras, the southernmost well of Fezzdn, in such a 
state of exhaustion, that we felt induced, notwith" 
r F 3 
