22 AFRICAN WANDERINGS.

dying) ; and so they passed on, and still the servants came not. At last, about nine o'clock at night, came our hunter Abdallah, with coverings and cushions, and made him up a bed, on which he lay all night in violent fever, but recovered somewhat ere sunrise; and, after a six hours' ride, again rejoined the Pascha's camp, who had been anxiously looking out for him, and welcomed him with kind, compassionate concern. A wretched house Avas assigned him as a shelter against the sun's heat, but the soldiers had already got possession of it ; — smoke, fires for baking bread, the chattering of the soldiers with the women and idle, restless villagers, added to the burning pain of his galled seat, from which the blood had run down into his trowsers, soaking his drawers, stockings, and all his under clothing— as I now saw with my own eyes — allowed him to find neither rest nor peace. His only comfort was a young black-brown girl, of some twelve years of age, whom the Bedouin had brought to cool him with a fan and keep off the flies and insects. In his dreaming mood he fancied this girl was some brilliant white guardian spirit, sent to give him ease. Next day, when on leaving he would have given her some small farewell present, she whom he had seen all night through, kneeling at his head and waving her fan, had vanished, and her mother with the utmost reluctance took the money ; though, from her language not being Arabic, Joseph could not say why she so long declined it.

In the warmest part of the day, two o'clock p. m., the Pascha was again the first to mount his dromedary, and it really seemed as if he desired to find out how much himself and followers could endure. At rapid pace he rode on along the banks of the Nile, past the ])yramids of Assur (to which I shall revert), through bushes and past some single Doum-palms, till he came to the village of El Djebl or Djebelab, situated in a small iiorse-shoe like bend of the hills. Before, when on our journey up to Sennaar, I had placed Joseph, who some days before had succumbed under the sun-stroke, beneath one of these palms, left him there, and at his repeated request had ridden on to examine the pyramids and their neiglibourhood ; but during my absence he was so annoyed by the blue-tailed lizards running backwards and forwards (his abhorrence) over him, that on my return I found he had left his position and been carried, more dead than alive, into the boat. The