2.3C -  Wells

"The well was only a hole in the sand, four feet wide and twenty feet deep.  It seemed that we could have easily passed it by, but our guides were excellent navigators.  The only clues were a crisscross of tracks and an area around the well that was liberally sprinkled with dark balls of camel dung.  Just that, and the carcass of some long-since-dead camel, a grotesque shape of bone covered by hard dry leather, with nothing but drifted sand inside.  How could a camel die in such a situation (with water available)?  My companion explained that the camel had died of exhaustion.  It had traveled on far too little food for much too long, gradually becoming weaker until its legs started to give way.  We sloshed water into the cooking pots for our beasts to drink from.  After sucking noisily at three or four gallons, the animals appeared to be satisfied so we turned to filling our guerbas (goat-hide sacks).  We had left Chinguetti with four of these goatskins bulging with water, and two of them were now much more than half empty.  I was drinking five or six pints, the others a little less, apart from the liquid from the tea and cooking.

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