38 AFRICAN WANDERINGS.

hours distant from water : during the night a strong cold wind blew on us from the south.

29th March.— To-day we were to make our entrance into Gos-Rajeb, and we were in motion before sunrise. The infantry Ibi-med two columns, the Turkish cavalry the right wing, the Schaigies and Magrabins the left. About eleven o'clock we found ourselves in this ordei', and deafened by drums, kettle-drums, and all kinds of Janissary music, in the Avide and almost naked plain to the east of Gos-Rajeb. The guns that had been in front did not retain that position, but were passed over to the right side of the here shallow Atbara, where, at the feet of the two rocks of Herrerem, our camp was formed, in a stony, almost treeless plain. Gos-Rajeb (Hill Rajeb) is some 400 paces distant frum the river bank, consists of loO or 200 tokul and loam houses, the former of these being unusually large, and displaying on their pointed tops ostrich eggs as ornaments. The inhabitants of this trading city are of various tribes : Bischari, Haddenda, &c. The few of them we saw were rather red in colour than black or brown ; but most of its inmates had fled at our approach. Gos-Rajeb lies in a desert, or nearly so; the goods come from India to Sanakim on the Red Sea, and are brought thence on camels. On a dromedary the journey can be made in seven or eiglit days. Caravans take ten or eleven ; though the Sheik of Gos-Rajeb said seventeen days were required to Sanakim, but only five or six to Kataref. According to him, the inhabitants of Gos-Rajeb are a race of themselves, who have been located there since time immemorial ; though he allowed that another race, not of the same descent as them, had settled down there in later times. The Pascha has instructed the Sheik to give me all and every information as to country and people, and to accompany me to all most worthy of being seen, and all remarkable points.

ZOth March. — Our expectations had been highly raised as regarded the ruins we lioped to find in this city of the rocks, for we, as well as the honoured Burckhardt before us, had heard much of Kenisse betal kufr, and of memorials of a Christian race. So in the morning we climbed up both hills, and found a grotesque formation of granite rocks, worn by the action of weather and other causes into the most fantastic shapes, and here and there towered