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 in-

sects. 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 vil-

lage 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