The next morning we began the passage of the loose sand-dunes above mentioned, and the most painful and perilous portion of the two hundred and eighty miles of desert between Berber and the Red Sea. The camels labored through the yielding sand, sinking under their feet at every step. On this day the mirage was intensely real. Before me lay a lake, its blue waters laughing in the sun, studded with gem-like islets clad with verdure, and boarded by castles, high turrets, and battlements, and again by gleaming villages and smil ing hamlets-the whole scene fairy like in its beauty, and a painful contrast to the arid sand and fierce heat and consuming thirst from which I was suffering. It is in vain that one rubs one's eyes and seeks to disabuse one's self of the illusion. The thing is there, undeniable, apparently solid and tangible; you know it is mocking you, like an ignis fatuus, but the most accurate knowledge of the physical laws which govern the phenomenon will not brush it away from the retina. There is small wonder that the ignorant and inexperienced should have frequently yielded to the delusion. Life is the price paid for such a mistake. Some years ago a company of soldiers perished from thirst in this region. Disregarding the warning of their guides, the poor fellows, fresh from Egypt, and mad with thirst, broke from the ranks and rushed toward the seeming lakes of transparent water which was presented to their eyes on all sides. They pressed on eagerly toward the everreceding phantasm, and one by one fell prostrate to leave their bones to bleach on the sand. On another occasion a detachment was sent across the desert to Berber on its way to Khartoum. The soldiers, refusing to be checked by the guides, consumed all their water when in sight of the mountains of ElBok, confident of their ability to reach the well. The heat was intense. The men became prostrate, and in a few hours died one by one in horrible agony. The arabs call the mirage bahr esh sheitan-" the devil's sea.

cloud of sand rolling up from the west. With a roar it was upon us, and I had to bury my face in my burnous* to shield it from the cutting particles of sand. The camels floundered about, blind and helpless; the Arabs howled and cried Abd-à-alah;" the whole caravan was in a state of confusion. What track there had been previously was obliterated. The drivers had lost their way, and there was the ugly fact of our water being very limited in quantity; and water in the desert means life. Moreover, my angareb slid off, and I was precipitated to the earth, miraculously escaping anything worse than a mere shaking. The distance between a camel's hump and his feet is a respectable one. Afterward, I was placed for additional security between two camels, slung athwart ; but one was rather smaller than the other-they, therefore, did not, strictly speaking, keep step. The result was the most excruciating movement ever experienced, which, combined with the bruises and abrasions from the recent fall, and a frame weakened by dysentery and an African climate, together with forebodings as to our probable fate it we did not strike the track again, produced a frame of mind far removed from that of Job's. We rested for the night, or rather a portion of it, in the midst of these unstable sands, and I was devoutly thankful to find my camel treading on firmer ground next day when we came to a plain of a similar nature to that we had passed previous to wading through the mounds of sand. But at length the track is hit off, and at last O-Bâk is reached. This small oasis has about thirty wells. The water is brackish and barely drinkable. The wells are small shafts sunk in the sand, with wooden curbing. The wells are constantly filling, and new ones being sunk. Before reaching this station we passed many graves of those who had perished in the desert. They were marked by borders of stones. Simple memorials of simple lives and lonely deaths. Before reaching O-Bâk passed a strange block of granite, the base of which is worn by the sand so that it is pear-shaped. This well-known

* A scarf,

we

landmark is known as Aboo-Odfa. Some few miles farther on we passed another mass, weird and solitary.

We had an hour's sand-wading after leaving O-Bâk before entering on the gravelly plain, equally devoid of wood and water, but much less painful to traverse. This plain gradually narrows toward its eastern extremity, where it is called Wadi-ed-Derûk. After a halt here we toiled on; the mountain Jebel Gurrât looming in the distance to our right. Before reaching this point we passed through the gloomy valley of Berud. Here I caught a glimpse of some asses-graceful, agile creatures, with gray bodies and white bellies, that bounded away at our approach. Whether they had been originally tame and had gone like "wild asses into the wilderness, or were naturally wild, I know not. These creatures were, with the exception of a few antelopes, many vultures, and some sand grouse near one of the wells, the only four-footed and winged denizens of this dreary desert that I saw on the journey. I beg his pardon; I met a lonely hare. "What doth he here?" I thought. Not feeding, certainly; as he bounded away over heaps of stones, among which it would have puzzled the most hungry puss to have snatched a mouthful. I forgot, too, the beautiful little ringdoves among the mimosa; sisters and brothers of those of Miss Flo's or Miss Daisy's; the doves one hears cooing in their aviary on a bright spring morning when residing at an English country-house. The way now pointed east by north through a narrow valley inclosed by low hills strewn with boulders of inky blackness. The scene was wild, grotesque, and forbidding. My Bashi-Bazouks had not received rations for the journey, and I had shared the remnant of provisions which remained between them and myself. The consequence was that I was reduced to a diet of dates, some salt bacon, and two tins of corned beef, and the brackish water we obtained at O-Bâk. The consuming thirst which seized me was augmented by this régime, and I looked forward with intense longing to our arrival at Ariab, where we might obtain good water and the delicious goat's inilk. We taxed our camels to the utmost, and after a short rest pushed on

through the night. We reached Ariab at six o'clock in the morning. A skin of milk was brought to me by my plucky and faithful Bashi-Bazouks. I say brought; how they got it I cannot say. They said they had not paid for it. I doubt now whether it was a gift; for these Arabs have a superstition that if they sell milk there will be a curse on them, the cattle will die, and all sorts of plagues will be on them. I did not know this then. Sir Samuel Baker has just told me this. But how I enjoyed that milk no tongue can tell! Refreshed, I fell asleep after the weary march. I was awakened from this fortifying siesta by the gentle chatter of female voices around my tent. The voice of the fairer half of creation has a cachet of its own all the world over, and I could have imagined myself in a London drawingroom, at five o'clock tea, half awake as I was. The fair daughters of the desert had congregated around the tent of the stranger out of sheer curiosity and love of the strange-" only this and nothing more." Ariab is the prettiest spot in this desert, and, relatively, it may termed lovely. There are three large well-constructed wells containing an abundant supply of clear water. The valley runs north-east and south-west. It is about five miles long and two wide. There is grazing for camels and goats, and some large acacias overhang the wells. There is an Arab settlement here.

be

Ariab woos the nomad from his

wandering instinct. For my part, weak and ill and burnt as I was, I wished I could have stayed here a month. Had I done so, however, I should have to become either a corpse or a mussulman ; loathsome either choice. From two to four in the afternoon the heat in the desert is overpowering. I found an excellent recipe, which I do not venture to recommend, however, for other climes. I wrapped myself in a sheet, and got my Dinka servant to pour water over me, and cooled myself as one does a bottle of champagne with a wet cloth, though I did not bury myself up in a drift. The sensation was most delicious. I laughed at the torrid heat. The evaporation being so rapid, one at once feels deliciously cool; as for rheumatism, it is nonplussed. The heat in the afterpart of the day is appalling;

one can hardly breathe. It is a struggle for existence. Every now and then you seem to receive a fierce blast from a furnace. I have not read in the numerous accounts I have seen of any one crossing the desert in July. It is not an experience which one would indulge in for the sake of pleasure. All I can say is that the few travellers whose winter experiences of the desert have been recorded will have to try a July transit before they know what the desert really can do in the way of grilling.

When we left the oasis of Ariab we pursued a devious course between low rocky hills, which closed in on us until they bounded the narrow valley called Wadi Yumga. The granite boulders were here more bold, and hemmed us in more closely, and for ten miles we threaded our way through them, halting on a bare rocky plain broad and level, with a hard gravelly soil. As we issued from the ravine we passed in twos and threes gentlemen in black with long spears strolling along by moonlight. Some of them asked me for tobacco, being "just out" of that commodity; but our guide and camel-drivers were thrown into a great state of mind by these apparitions, and on arriving at the usual halting-place on the plain entreated me to go on, urging that the gentlemen we had passed would certainly murder us that night. I could not consider the fact of being asked for tobacco indicating any intention of murder, remembering that one often meets a gentleman in London who is "just out of tobacco,' so I positively refused to go without my night's rest. The drivers then entreated me to fire off my rifle several times as a caution; to this waste of ammunition I also demurred. They then requested me to pitch my tent in their middle; but not liking the effluvia of camels and their drivers I declined this request also, pitching my tent at least fifty yards distant from the halted caravan. But they gradually encircled my domicile, and sat up all night singing and talking loud-to make the supposed enemy afraid to

attack.

But they were more or less right in their fears; these naked men with their spears and shields were on the war path -on toward the fore-doomed Sincat

yet they never attempted to touch me, although I had only two unarmed attendants with me and a few camel-drivers. There is a nobility about the bearing of these chivalrous nomads that one respects and admires.

Our camping-ground was under a low hill to our right; we found a well and a spring here, with fairly good water. This spot marks the line of demarcation between the Bishareen and the Hadendowa tribes. The latter are richer and more powerful, they possess cattle as well as camels, and grow dhurra and even cotton in the districts near Kassala. Some people have found a resemblance between them and the Jews, and think they are Jews in fact; I only find one point in common-a strong desire to grasp other people's property. We left the low hill and the spring called Roah, and wound among low rocky spurs on our way to Kokreb, fourteen and a half miles from Roah. After a long desert ride Kokreb, which possesses a delightful gushing spring and some vegetation, seems an Eden. During the whole journey we had been gradually ascending, and had now attained an altitude of 23c0 feet. Leaving Kokreb we passed over a range of wildly beautiful hills. The tortuous pass debouches into a barren, treeless valley, strewn with fragments of porphyry and trap, in wild but picturesque confusion. One might well imagine that the Titans had been playing at bowls with the rocks, or that his Satanic majesty had given a dance to a select number of friends at this spot. It is a weird-like scene indeed! halted at Ahab, or O-Habdl. Beyond this comes a plain, a tract of rocky soil. alternating with strips of thin soil, supporting coarse and scanty herbage. The spurs of the low rocky hills to the north jut into the plain, which is thinly studded with stunted minosa, and uncouth, unearthly-looking dragon-trees (dracænæ). Here, too, we came across the Caraïb, with its winglike branches prickly and jagged, a tree strangely in keeping with its savage habitat. ing the plain we entered a narrow valley running north-east and then trending east. This brought us in a couple of hours to the watershed of the Nile and the Red Sea, the highest point on the road, 2870 feet above the sea.

We

Leav

The valley contracts into a defile before reaching Haratri, where we found two wells of good water, and encamped. The rocks here start up like gigantic gaunt grim idols all around. Granite porphyry and greenstone crop up along the whole route. A strange and hitherto unexplained phenomenon exists in connection with the rocks in this desert. Whatever may be their color they are uniformly covered with a black coating, which gives them a sombre and forbidding appearance, adding to the solemn impressiveness of the scene--indescribably grand is this mountain route. Soon after quitting Haratri we entered a weird region, where the huge black boulders were strewn `around in the wildest confusion: Lateral ravines gave glimpses of a chaotic labyrinth of rocks of fantastic form piled one upon another. Huge fragments were sown broadcast everywhere. The place might have served for a painter to represent the battle-ground of Milton's angels and the hosts of Lucifer. The whole scene had an eerie" and unearthly aspect. The most daring conceptions of Martin or Gustave Doré fail to give an adequate idea of it, though it recalled to me some of the latter's illustrations to Dante's Inferno."

us

A fearful storm came down upon us as we were traversing this district. It was suddenly on us. The flashes were incessant, and "the lightning ran along the ground" and darted among the rocks, illuminating the sinister looking masses with awful brilliancy. One could realize one of the plagues of Egypt, as the rain came down in sheets; amid the rush of water and the rolling of the thunder arose the wild cry of the Bishareen, "Ab-dállah." Abdallah was a sheik, who is held in great veneration, and is, in fact, a sort of patron saint who is constantly appealed to during journeys and in times of peril. It is a monotonous long-drawn cry. I have heard it explained as an invocation to the spirit of the storm.

Eight hours after leaving Haratri we arrived at O Oched, a charming spot, with water thirty inches below the soil. The road then followed shallow ravines bordered by low rocky ridges, debouching on to a wide open plain. This ter minates in low sandy hills, between the

slopes of which our camels plodded wearily. This valley affords substance to a few stunted trees. We camped by two wells, very shallow, but affording a supply of fair water. After this came another ravine beyond, which we trayersed, the crest of a low spur plentifully sprinkled with low bushes. Descending this we again wound through a labyrinth of defiles. The road now ran due east in a steady descent, which told me that we were surely approaching the longedfor goal-the shores of the Red Sea. We halted once more on the edge of a small plain surrounded by low hills. The sunrise over the irregular serrated summits of these hills was exceedingly beautiful. We left the plain and crossed more rocky spurs, rising into bare hills on our right, intersected by numerous ravines. After another rest we started for Bir-Handuk. The country bore the same characteristics-bare Khors and ranges of hills, then a plain where the mimosa bushes were more dense than hitherto.

This

We arrived at Bir-Handuk about eleven o'clock in the forenoon. I pitched my tent under a tree, about a hundred yards from the wells. A group of Hadendowa Arabs stood around them. There were about thirty of them, and I paid no attention to them at the time. Presently my camel-drivers came running to me and said the Hadendowa refused to let them approach the wells. I sent a tall, stalwart negro (originally a Dinka slave), still in my service, to tell them I was an officer in the service of the Government. had no effect. I could have travelled the intervening twelve miles between this place and Suakin, but illness and fatigue are not conducive to patienceone is made irritable-and I determined to have water at any cost; being annoyed at the impudence of the refusal, I gave my Bashi-Bazouks a revolver each, and asked them if they would stand by me. They responded with alacrity. I again sent my servant to say to the Arabs that I should at once open fire if they did not clear out, pointing my rifle at the same time. After some hesitation they moved off sulkily, and we were able to assuage our thirst. Knowing nothing of the disposition of these tribes I was unable to