TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 
249 
any time wanting to procure food and water for the weary animals 
who had so amply deserved them ; but we could only carry a certain 
portion of corn with us from Tripoly, and when this was exhausted 
we were obliged to depend upon occasional supplies from the Arab 
tents we met with in our route, and the scanty pasturage which 
the Syrtis afforded. 
The distance at which some of the wells were placed from each 
other was the occasion of our being often without water ; and our 
horses, though suffering greatly from thirst, would frequently refuse 
to drink the water which we were glad to drink ourselves, when it 
chanced to be more than usually brackish. 
It often happened when they had been long without water, or 
were more than ordinarily fatigued with the day’s exertions, that some 
of them would refuse to eat at all, though they had been without 
food the whole of the day, as well as all the night which preceded it. 
They were never in the habit of being fed more than once a day, 
which was in the evening, when we stopped for the night ; so that if 
they refused to eat their corn at that time, or before starting the 
next morning, it was more than probable that they would get 
nothing till the tents were pitched again, after sunset, on the evening 
succeeding. Under these circumstances they would perhaps have 
to trot hard the whole day, and occasionally to gallop, when we were 
pressed for time ; sometimes along the loose sand on the beach, and 
at others up and down hill in every direction, wherever there was 
anything to examine : all this often happened during a hot south- 
erly wind, and under a burning sun, which kept them in a continual 
