we having received definite information that all the Arab forces had retired to the right bank of the river. Our caravan was heavily laden with food, everybody who pretended to know anything about it seeming to agree that between us and the river there was only a desert, and that it would be impossible to nourish the caravan for more than a day or two. While in this camp we had had a great deal of sickness — chiefly colic and slight fevers — which I attributed to the exposed position of the plateau.

The nights were really cold — with a fall in temperature from 100” to about 50° — though we were only some three hundred feet above the surrounding plain. Notwithstanding this, however, our caravan was in a great state of jubilation, as we were now in the Salt District, several large saline