AN UNREASONABLE REQUEST ! 163 by some grateful descendant, but where he got the name Eve from we may puzzle to know. It sounds so nice and so very poetic, and one thinks how sweet and affectionate and savoury and clean she would be ; but her prototypes among the Dinkas, and their manners and customs, do not bear this out, and my thoughts turn to the black thing in front of me, sitting in dust, lean, ugly, regardless of parasites, and making butter too dreadful to think of.

My Arabs had stared at me in amazement when they were asked for the " camera," not understanding the word, and I had to fall back on the Arabic equivalent for "black box," inasmuch as I found they had mistaken my request, and deemed I required them to bring me the moon {kamar), and thought me unreasonable ! But at Mellut, where the Nas7' called for a short time, the Arab colony exhibited an ancient acquaintance with the camera, no doubt through the agency of enterprising tourists who seek refreshment ofmind in the journey through swamps and the land of ferocious seroot flies.

A few score of miles up the river the men would have stood on the bank shaking their hands up and down, and bending their knees in synchrony, to keep off the *' evil eye " of the boat from their dhurra and herds. But here it is Eve who evinces the same superstition ; the thought of the eye of the serpent assailing her, she scurries affrighted to the gloom of her hut when she sees the black magical box pointed at her.

11—2