44 AFRICAN WANDERINGS.

very deep two or three inch wide water runs intersecting it in all directions, plainly showing by these deep and wide excavations, how heavy the rain torrents must be here. The Pascha we found already encamped, in full security and utmost unconcern, while for a long time the forest kept throwing out his soldiery in beautiful disorder. Each took up his position as he pleased, — cavalry and camel-mounted infantry followed the example, — while a much longer tail of the ass-mounted came slowly creeping out of the defile. Our confidence in the Pascha's generalship had been much shaken, and it now fell off much more at this sample of Turkish indolence, to Avhich it never occurred to take any measures, or make any proper disposition of his forces.

On pui'suing our march we came again to forest, but much opener, and we were now free from crowd and confusion ; but from this all the more likely to fall a prey to the foe. Soon there stretched out before us a long wide field, full of numerous holes ; these seemed, above, one and a half to two feet in diameter ; but below, some four or six, with a depth of the same. They were pear-shaped, and said to be used by the natives to store their grain in. A town must once have been here. Before now we had observed such open spaces ; — a sign that this fruitful stretch of land, on which we had now some days been marching, Avas at times inhabited in certain places by some nomade tribes ; and we also remarked, especially at Soggilab, ditches and walls, though not of the most artful structure, to retain the rain water and guide it in irrigating the soil. The soil is lighter than that of the Nile, but covered with the same crust of some fine substance most similar to Nile slime, and must from its lightness be looked on as of vegetable origin ; the more so as this is only to be found in the neighbourhood of the Atbara, and the deposit left by the rain floods from the mountains can only be looked for in their channels, or -where such gather in the low grounds.

After a further march of three good hours we arrived at some wells, which, like those at Soggilab, ran in a line or course from south-east to north-west, and wliich might lead one to suspect a subterraneous river, or river bed, as here no great fiill of the ground is to be seen. Near the wells were flocks of handsome birds, called Honey-birds (Nectarinia lucida) ; but they were soon frightened