It soon proved to be an oppressively close morning.
Herri joined us later in the forenoon with a slaughtered sheep slung on each side of his camel, the diafa from the Goran camp.
We followed sheep and camel tracks and marched from one valley into another until we camped in one of the largest of them, which had many shady trees.
It is always a problem whether to stop under the shade of a tree and suffer the attacks of white ants and all sorts of sinister-looking insects or pitch tent in the broiling sun. In future, I shall be inclined to take my chance in the open, as the insects are always with you, while the sun’s heat is over by five or six in the afternoon. The valley in which we camped is called Kap-Terku.
We started again at four, with a southeast breeze that made walking not so tedious. There were also a few clouds which tempered the heat of the sun. The camels walked better. In the late afternoon we passed a Goran family, a man, wife, and naked child, and later we found a well. It was seven meters deep and had good water, though the roots of a near-by tree had rotted in it, giving it an unpleasant odor.
WELL ON THE FRONTIER OF DARFUR
We camped at eight fortunately in a clear space free from shrubs and stones. At one in the morning a hyena visited the camp, and had it not been for the vigilance of Hamid, the camelman, it might have got Baraka, who was tied at night and therefore unable to defend himself. Hamid fired at it impulsively, and with my glasses I saw a dark object running far away in the brilliant moonlight.
Sunday, May 27. Start at 5:15 A.M., halt at 9:15 A.M. start again at 3:45 P.M., halt at 7:45 P.M. Make 30 kilometers. Highest temperature 38°, lowest 7°. Fine, clear, and calm in the morning. At midday strong hot southeast wind, which drops in afternoon. Few white clouds. Warm and calm in the evening. Very cloudy, with few drops of rain at 10 P.M. Valleys of soft sand as before, with low sandstone hills twenty to eighty meters high. Patches of the same stone crop out through the sand.
Herri proved himself a bad guide. He predicted that we would reach Bao this morning, but when night came we were not yet there. He knew the places when he saw them, but his sense of direction was faulty. Our water had given out, except for one last girba, and it was very hot.