Geddref. 99 June to September—are covered with long grass, but in the dry season form an arid and waterless desert.

Captain De Cosson says :—" The desert between Suk Abn Sin and Abu Haraz is not sand, but mud, and nothing meets the eye as far as it can reach but the dead skeleton grass of last rain season, which rises dry and white in the burning sunshine, making the plain look at a distance like a gigantic field of over-ripe corn. The track is worn bare by the feet of camels, and strewh with their bones. An unwholesome smell of dead vegetable matter rises from the cracks in the black mud, now all parched and baked, and reflecting back the almost vertical rajs of the sun, like heated fire-brick. It is easy to understand how fever lurks on these plains, both when the tropical rains are melting all the decayed vegetable matter of which the mud is composed, and when the sun is boiling the blood in one's veins, and the very air one is breathing is at the temperature of a baker's oven " (May, 1873). At Jebel Araing (Galaat Aranj), a range 40 miles north-west of Suk Abu Sin, there is often wrater, but with this exception there is none until Hellet esh Sherif is reached (105 miles from Suk Abu Sin).

The country between Gedaref and Gallabat is level, and thickly covered with mimosa trees. Doka is a large village about half-way. Little water in this district. The ground begins to rise south of Doka, towards the group of hills, Has el Fil, which is termed the Gallabat country. Here the scenery is excessively pretty and mountainous, with several streams. Many leopards, lion also numerous.

(e) Gallabat.

Description, The district of Gallabat comprises (1863) about 20,000 souls, distributed among 24 villages. Of these, after Matamma, the chief ones are Kumeli, Abd er Rasul, Hellet ed Dervish, and Doka. No running water north of Hellet ed Dervish. Very fertile country, but little cultivated.

Gallabat lies at the foot of the Ethiopian highlands, and in former days, up to 1862, belonged to Abyssinia. It was taken by the Egyptians in that year.

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