134 FROM BINDER, AND NILE TO NILE gear was taken clean off or hooks straightened out, showing the size of the monsters. Tiiey are excellent eating.

On the opposite bank lay the gunboat, protecting this main road from the frontier, which had taken a sudden dip southward from Abu Ramleh, and was now many miles up the stream.

Under an adjacent tebeldi-tree worked a native blacksmith, his goatskin bellows blown by a patient small boy. With their crude tools these men can do very good work, and some are remarkably clever.

Not far away some young waterbuck were being tamed for transmission over the 400 miles to Khartoum and to Cairo. They are herded with calves of about the same age, and are gently induced to submit to a tether, by degrees being brought to follow the calves and be handled.

News came that only four days remained for me to cross over to Renk, 116 miles to the west.

Being considered a fair five days' journey, it was obvious that one night's rest was all that could be spared among the charming surroundings of the Assuan of the Blue Nile, as it was laughingly styled. But little of a health-resort can it claim to be, and one of those hosts who so kindly received me lay dead not long after of blackwater fever.

Nor could I accept a suggestion which was made, that I should shoot a rogue elephant which was causing much damage to crops a day down the river. So the evening saw the camels ferried across ; all my dark friends of the chase were left