440 
NITROUS DRINKING-WATER. 
dreary valley several huts built of matting are inha- 
bited by Arabs and their flocks. Who else could live 
on the spot? Where do their small long-haired 
goats get a single blade of grass to feed upon? It 
would seem as if they could not exist ; yet before us 
is a flock of sixty, which are brought to drink at the 
well every third or fourth day, and though living on 
this brackish water, no animals ever appeared more 
healthy. The people residing here are not different 
from the natives of Aboo Ahmed, and are not more 
unhealthy; but one of them begged for medicine to 
cure a chest complaint. Several of their children were 
pretty, with intelligent eyes, and looking wild as 
colts, with all the hair shaved off their heads except 
a forelock and long tress from the crown of the head. 
In this valley of Morad there is not an atom of 
firewood; indeed, for three days' travelling, day and 
night, we had not met with more than thirty trees ; 
and, being so rarely seen, we took them almost every 
time for a mirage. 
9 th. — At eleven o'clock we left the wells en route 
for Korosko, still some days' journey without wood or 
water upon the way; and therefore we carried the 
brackish water of the Morad wells with us. It was 
very unpleasant to wash with, as it curdled the soap, 
and the exterior of the water-bags became powdered as 
with flour. The camels did not suffer much from drink- 
ing it. Our route was across a series of rocky spurs 
and dykes, all tapering down to the Nile far away to 
our left. The strata of the rocks seemed reversed in 
position, as if they had been uplifted by a convulsion 
in the north. One of the ridges which crossed our 
road at Wadi Soofoor was four hundred yards long, 
