98 A RIVER WITHOUT A MOUTH, The women gradually became quite confiding, and displayed that passion for admiration and attention common to the sex over both the civilised and uncivilised world. Numbers came to have their photographs taken by my brother, and were greatly delighted when we noticed their beads. Both men and women greatly appreciated the red tinsel capsules we had on some claret bottles : the men in particular greatly affected these as ornaments, — some beating them into a square shape, and hanging them round their necks, while others tipped the ends of the wooden skewers which all the men wear in their hair with the bright-coloured bauble.

We again proposed the magic-lantern ; and this time a number came to the entertainment, with which they seemed to be greatly delighted.

Our next camping-ground was about ten miles farther up the river's bed, on a burnt patch of ground between some high grass and the Gash. The natives declared we had reached the Mareb, of which they had been talking for days. The Gash and Mareb are one and the same thing. The Arabs of the Soudan call it the Gash ; the Abyssinians, the Mareb ; and the Base, the Sonah. It rises in Abyssinia, and flows only during the rains ; even then, although a very broad and swiftly flowing river, none of its waters reach the sea, being lost in the sands of the desert. The Arabs have the vaguest ideas of geography, and know next to nothing of the countries immediately surrounding the places where they arc living themselves. For a long time all the men we had with us, if they offered an opinion at all, insisted that the Mareb and Gash were perfectly distinct and different water-courses : they were, however, at last forced to acknowledge them to be one and the same. They also declared that we should find that the Mareb was a flowing river ; instead of which, all the water has