NESTS VEGETATION. 
151 
In the Northern Sahara a bird's nest was not to be 
seen, but here the trees are all covered with them. 
Amongst the various smaller ones, we came upon a 
huge vulture's nest on a very small tholukh, which 
seemed to bend and look unhappy beneath the 
weight of this den of rapacity and violence. There 
are hereabouts no rocks for the eagles to build 
upon. We halted amidst abundance of herbage and 
small trees, which afforded a little shelter from the 
wind. 
It is, perhaps, as well that we begin the year 
with this most bleak and unlovely day. We may 
have a better one to terminate 1851. I was obliged 
to increase my travelling clothes, and put on an 
extra holi on account of the cold wind; and yet 
the temperature was not very low, it being only 46° 
at sunrise. The wind evidently comes over an 
immense extent of plain towards the east, perhaps 
some forty or fifty days' journey. We made six 
hours and a-half. 
2d. — We started early, and moved at first to the 
beat of the drum. Already yesterday we had seen 
symptoms that the desert was drawing to a close. 
To-day we fairly got out of it, and entered upon a 
wilderness of small trees. The vegetation has not, 
however, yet improved in proportion to our nearness 
to Soudan ; for this dwarf forest of tholukh and 
various other trees cannot be compared to the 
splendid desert vegetation in the Aheer valleys : 
these are pigmy mimosas in comparison with those 
