44 DHOUM-PALM MATTING.

sakeeyeh, of exactly the same kind as the wheel so well known to Nile-travellers by that name. The others had noc been able to do anything towards buying or hiring camels, and of course all those we had brought from Souakim had to return to the coa:st : their drivers probably knew no other road, and spent their lives in going up and down. Arabs are wonderful fellows for getting into one groove, and sticking to it, and are not at all fond of "fresh fields and pastures new."

We had met extremely few caravans on our journey; in fact, I never went over a beaten track in Africa, and saw so little evidence of traffic or commerce. One day we met a caravan of seventy camels laden with dJuirra, and mats made of the fibrous leaf of the <7%<?;/;;/-palm. These are made by the women ; they are very cheap, and used for many different purposes. Some of our servants slept upon them. We always spread them about the floor of our tents ; but great holes were soon eaten in these by the destructive white ants, and they fell to pieces. When we stopped any length of time anywhere, and the trees did not afford us sufficient protection against the sun, we erected temporary shelters by sticking poles in the ground, on which, in a very short time, a kind of arbour could be formed by means of this matting : this was far cooler and preferable to sitting in our own tents during the daytime. The caravan in question was accompanied by about fifty men, besides women and children,— by far the largest we encountered. Sometimes several days elapsed during which we hardly met a camel. This was a very different state of things from what I had seen during previous visits to the country, when in travelling we frequently met long strings of a hundred, and even two hundred, camels at a time. The road between Souakim and Cassala, however, though an important one, is not one of the main arteries for the commerce of the Soudan.