As we continued on our course, the landscape--a level plain, that stretched away for miles till it met the horizon--was covered with camels grazing upon tamarisk-bushes, which, with a few mangostans, an occasional specimen of acanthus, and a coarse and scanty herbage, were the only specimens of the vegetable kingdom that met our gaze. The scene during the remainder of the afternoon was the same, the monotony being relieved only when we stopped for half an hour to take a supply of wood from a large pile collected on the bank for this purpose, and thus had an opportunity of stretching our legs on _terra firma_. At dusk, the steam-boat was run ashore, the steam blown off, and here we were to remain for the night. The natives immediately rushed on shore, and began preparing fires to cook their provisions. The ship's cook had already supplied me with a cup, or rather a tin pot of tea; but as the growing coolness of the evening, and the example of my neighbours, rather encouraged my appetite, I resolved to make a second edition of my evening meal, and accordingly took under my arm the copper canteen which formed the sum-total of my culinary apparatus--the lid being my only plate or dish--and furnished with a supply of tea, sugar, cold meat, and biscuit, made my way to a spot a short distance off, where I might take my food on the solitary system, according to the custom that we Englishmen most delight in. When I had lighted the fire, and put the water on to boil, I cast myself on the ground, and complacently puffing away at my pipe, gazed at the wild but picturesque scene before me. The position of the river was marked out by a semicircle of some fifty or sixty fires, before which dark and ill-defined figures were ever and anon flitting like phantoms; while, in the midst, the funnel of the steam-boat loomed tall and black above the veil of smoke that hung around--like some dark and horrid object Of heathen idolatry surrounded by its sacrificial fires. The sounds that met my ear, however, dispelled this somewhat fanciful idea; for in the stillness of the night voices grow distinct, while forms are indebted to the imagination for filling up their outlines.