It thunders every afternoon, and rains somewhere as regularly as it thunders, but these are but partial rains; they do not cool the earth; nor fill the cracks made in the dry season.
_27th October, 1867._--Off early in a fine drizzling rain, which continued for two hours, and came on to a plain about three miles broad, full of large game.

These plains are swamps at times, and they are flanked by ridges of denudation some 200 or 300 feet above them, and covered with trees.
The ridges are generally hardened sandstone, marked with madrepores, and masses of brown haematite.

It is very hot, and we become very tired.

There is no system in the Arab marches.

The first day was five hours, this 3-1/2 hours; had it been reversed--short marches during the first days and longer afterwards--the muscles would have become inured to the exertion.