164 TO THE LAND OF THE NEGROID The small girls bring one nearer to home. They are just as inquisitive, just as shy and half frightened at anything strange, as the wee lassies of England.

After gentle persuasion they peep through the camera " finder," spy their sisters, shriek with halfscared delight as they rush headlong away from the incomprehensible thing—only just for a short distance—and then come back again.

The steamers are fired by wood cut from the bush which fringes the river, and the increasing demand is causing the gradual denudation of the banks by the small colonies of Arabs that are maintained at the many " wood-stations " formed for this purpose. An impertinent stranger might hazard the opinion that one of the first duties of the Woods and Forests Department might well be the replanting of the large areas which have been despoiled of their timber, only too often in the wasteful native fashion, which cuts the trunks high up, leaving the stump unused to decay and rot.

Coal in briquette form is brought up and used to a small extent, but even with the opening of the Port Sudan railway to the Red Sea the cost is practically prohibitive.

The main enemy of fine timber in this country is fire ; the tortured twists of the straggly trunks bear witness to the fierceness of the flames which lick up the grass around them. Small chance is there for seedlings, and doomed is the tree whose bark gets once burned through. Here are tree-stumps smouldering, days after the swift rush of the con-