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more serious cases, is without remedy: there is no possibility of bringing him up, so you must reconcile yourself, when you get on such vehicles, to all risks of breaking, at least, an arm or a leg. But, barring all apprehensions of danger, and all precautions for personal security, there is a feeling approaching to rapture in the independence of a desert life, which no one can imagine save those who have experienced it, and which I have always felt on finding myself amongst men who have received me with frankness and affability. The unanimity which prevails amongst the members of an Arab tribe, amply repay them for all their privations. A simple covering of goats' or camels' hair, which the desert Arab carries with him, serves to protect himself and family from the severity of the weather. Nothing bounds his desires; he can select the spot of earth he chooses, and, without being necessitated to distinguish property by its boundaries, he divides with his neighbour the pasturage of

the desert, for the nourishment of his innumerable sheep, goats, and camels.

Long after sunset, we reached Waasut. The surrounding country was an expanse of desolation-a vast sea without water-recalling to my mind the same desert waves which lie around the desolated heaps of fallen Babylon. No cultivation whatever was distinguishable; the only vegetation we could see consisted of a few shrivelled plants, some tufts of reedy grass, and a low furze, of which the camels ate abundantly. We found that the description of these plains, as given by Xenophon, was strikingly accurate. "The country was a plain throughout, as even as the sea, and full of wormwood: if any other kind of shrubs or reeds grew there, they had all an aromatic smell; but no trees appeared. Of wild creatures, the most numerous were wild asses, and not a few ostriches, besides bustards and roe-deer, which ou horsemen sometimes chased*."

VOL. II.

* Xenophon's Anabasis. Book i.

F

We rested for the night in a miserable reedhut, which could barely afford us shelter, and on the morrow commenced our survey of Waasut, which consisted of about forty or fifty wretched houses, built of mud and fragments of brick dug out of the ruins of the old city, which lay entombed beneath dark hillocks of sand. Around these spread a few monuments of former edifices, and an antique crumbling wall encompassing masses of decayed brickwork, where the ounce and the lion found a secure and seldom disturbed retreat. A more thorough change cannot be conceived than that which has occurred at Waasut. Its streets, once the scene of active commerce from every part of India, Persia, and Arabia, are now ploughed over by the Arabian fellah, and browsed by the flock of the shepherd. Its mouldering and time-worn buildings, merely whisper the tale of its celebrity, entombed as it now lies in a sepulchre rising around them by its own decay.

The unwillingness of my guides to remain

on this site, prevented my digging for any ancient fragments of statuary, inscriptions, or engraved gems, which are generally discoverable amongst the débris of all the Mahommedan cities that rose to eminence upon the decline of Seleucia and Ctesiphon. On my last visit to ancient Babylon, I found an intaglio, of which an enlarged representation is here given.

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NIGHT IN THE DESERT.

sun stained the firmament with bright and lovely colours; and as he sunk beneath the desert, the whole sky blazed, and the western horizon continued brighter than molten gold. When the moon appeared with her silvery light, these gorgeous colours faded, and were succeeded by a few fleecy specks, which looked "like lambs grazing on the hills in heaven."

Remounting our camels, we returned towards Koot. On clearing the low ridge of mounds immediately connected with the site of Waasut, we made for the Hye, and travelled by the large sparkling stars, which in this región are bright beyond expression. From their light, one might actually read the smallest printed volume. Diodorus Siculus expressly states, that travellers in the southern part of Arabia directed their course by the Bears, ἀπὸ τῶν Ἄρκτων*. We passed many encampments, which were always pitched on the shelving sides of a

* Lib. i. p. 156, edit. Rhodoman.