STORMS. — LIGHTNING. — RAIN. 185 considered in a more friendly country ; for the guards round the camp are much weaker than in Ai-ronga, and are only posted of an evening, and then round the large tires constantly kept up to scare away the wild beasts. In other ways we are not particularly Avell oif. Saving hares and gazelles, the first costing one, and the second, if any size, three or four piastres, there is no good food to be got. A most fearful evil is the bad, stinking water, and worse than all the rest, the dreadful heat. Our tent is of thick, double canvas, and yet the sunbeams pierce so glowingly through it, that we are forced to lay coverlets and such like things over the side the sun strikes on, to try and thus get some relief.

Tents that have been painted over with some colouring are mucU cooler, from having their pores thus filled, than those of white linen or canvas. We have been more than once favoured, during j the night, by storms, with heavy rain, Avhich soaked us well ; nor were we altogether free from alarm at the constant lightning and thunder, as our tent was pitched under the highest tree hereabout, and at a distance from tlie others.

The severest storm we experienced in Africa was in Chartum, on the 31st August, 1839, during which many houses were destroyed by the wind and rain, and eleven vessels foundered in the White Nile. The masses of water poured down from heaven were such, that for more than a week afterwards the sun had not dried up the puddles in the narrow streets. We were at the time on our return from the bath we had been taking in the Nile, and counted flashes of lightning in eleven different points of the horizon round us; there was, too, such a brilliant clearness spread about on all sides, that, although it was otherwise very dark, one could see to read quite plainly. In four points the lightning was so violent, that it no longer seemed zigzag flashes, but like streaked columns of fire, ascending from earth to sky,— a splendidly beautiful sight ! In our house every room Avas full of water ; in the court we had to wade through streams up to our knees, in passing through it to examine our store-house ; and tliis set in order, we had nothing for it, to keep off" the ill effects, but to sit on our table and drink hot punch. The next house to us was a powder magazine, and we still look on it as good fortune we were not