Not being able to get water for the camels was a serious matter, as our animals were not of the strongest, nor had they been recently trained for a long journey without water. This was the evening of the third day from Berber, and many of the poor brutes were showing signs of weakness. We resolved, therefore, to hurry on at once to the next well, that of Ariab; so we left the inhospitable wadi, and started at three in the morning on our next stretch of fifty-three miles.
These night marches were pleasant enough; it was only the hour or two before dawn when the heaviness of sleep troubled us; but just as we began nodding, and felt in danger of falling off our camels, the keen change in the temperature which freshens the desert in the early morning braced us up, and, fully awake, we watched for the coming of Venus. As she sailed across the heavens, she flooded the desert with a warm, soft light, which in its luminosity equaled an English summer moon, and shortly seemingly following her guidance, the great fiery shield of the sun stood up from the horizon, and broad day swept over the plain.
Toward the evening we found ourselves in a bowlder-strewn basin amid rocky, sterile hills, evidently the offshoots and spurs of the Jeb-el-Gharr, which stood out a purple serrated mass on our left, and here we saw for the first time for many a month rain clouds piling up above the rocky heights. Their tops, catching the rosy glow from the declining sun, appeared in their quaint forms like loftier mountains with their snowy summits all aglow. This was, indeed, a grateful sight to us; the camels already pricked up their ears, for the smell of moisture was in the air. We knew that the end of our waterless journey was not far off; for where those clouds were discharging their precious burdens the valley of Ariab lay. But many a weary ridge of black rock and agaba must still be crossed before our goal was reached.