THE WATERLESS WASTE 329 noted that * besides water, camel fodder and ordinary1 pro- visions I had been lucky enough to procure out of the stores recently arrived from Siut, bacon, sausages, cheeses, wine, chocolates and other luxuries, while one of the beasts carried on top of its load a whole hen-coop containing 30 chickens!' No wonder that his average day's inarch was only 15 miles (18| if the five days' of halting be excluded from the reckoning) as compared with our 35 ! If his expedition was a better model of organisation, we can perhaps justly claim to have faced a more searching test of the desert's inhospitality, From all accounts the Libyan desert is worse off for vegeta* tion than the Empty Quarter under the influence of a long drought, but there the difficulty is met by carrying fodder for the animals, while in Arabia the camels must do the best they can on what is provided by niggardly Nattire or go starving. Therefore they must travel fast, and that is always the main consideration in Arabian camel-breeding. On another point Africa and Arabia present a curious and interesting contrast, the Arab strongly preferring the female camel for his journey- ing, while in the deserts of Egypt and Libya only the male seems to be used for riding. In all our train we had but one male camel—and he was a gelding much to the disappoint- ment of an optimistic breeder in Sulaiyil, who turned up at our camp with a female from his herd in the hope of getting her covered by a bull of the renowned *Umaniya strain. To spur his fellows to action Zayid, who had done most of the coffee-making while the others slept wrapped in their mantles, displayed great energy in loading up the baggage- animals for the resumption of the march about noon. The country was now a veritable chequer-board of alternating patches of sand and gravel, over which we picked oar way, gradually diverging from the main Sahma plain as w&