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 rising from the ground. Only one of us was foolish enough to put his clothes on in this state, and suffered by getting a sharp touch of fever. After this we always, when we did undress—which was not often—put our clothes under our air pillows, and thus kept them dry. Another unpleasant fact connected with our camp was, that it was quite close to the Arab burial-ground, and there were some hundreds of graves within sixty yards of our tents. As the Arabs do not bury their dead very far beneath the surface, but rather on the top of the ground, with a covering of stones over the bodies, the atmosphere at nights was unpleasantly loaded with the foulest odours. This, one would have thought, was hardly a healthy spot in a hot climate for even a temporary camp.

Of course, we all very soon had the skin burnt off our faces, not only by the direct heat of the sun, but by the refraction from the sand, which is almost as bad. One thing which nearly all of us suffered from was sore lips. Our lower lips would swell up to an enormous size and then break and fester. It was very painful, but when once cured we were not troubled again in this way, A good thick moustache was the best preventative, and I am sure a beard