142 FROM BINDER, AND NILE TO NILE the great footprints were looked at with interest, and the minds of all were quickly recalled to the heat and the thirst and fatigue, and the mocking great gehel before us.

Miles farther on there appeared patches of grass all cut short, and to my ears came the plaintive cry of a goat ; thank goodness, at last we were nearing the goal. Small children ran shyly away with their herds, or dodged behind bushes and grass. We overtook men on the march, and the gebel came suddenly nearer. So used had I become to the view of the hill being merely a vertical plane, that to see its face develop prominences and hollows seemed strange ; and when tlie hill was actually near it seemed to come rapidly toward one, making up for its coyness at first.

That Gebel Gule should be seen from afar is not to be wondered at. It is 1,050 feet high, and close upon three miles long. In the days of the kingdom of Sennaar, Gule was the chief town of the province, but now has fallen from its high estate, and the headquarters of the district is Keili, nearer the Abyssinian frontier, across the present fine of which extended a portion of the old Fung kingdom, a descendant of whose Kings gave his name to the village of Sheikh Idris Wad Regab.

The inhabitants number about a thousand, and are either Hameg pure or with a dash of the ancient Fung in their veins.

I had brought the monthly wages to the police at both Agadi and Gule, and this proved a very