AN EVENING PROCESSION 171 seemingly under the tails of his coat, yet he was only a marabout stork seeking food.

Cattle appeared at intervals, grazing ; black dots grew out on the wastes, showing man ; the protuberance took shape in the shimmering sunlight, and became a brick house with a cane fence around.

Irregular buildings around it, a few heat-stricken trees on the bank, with some vegetation beneath, the Governor's house stood high in a land where a molehill would count as an eminence. Still well in mid-stream—for the river is wide at this point we made for a spot where some nuggars were gathered on the outer side of the western of the two islands. Dropping the sandals, or barges, on which were some Sudanese soldiers bound for the south, we made fast.

Even Fashoda develops. The long line of the settlement crowning the bank some hundreds of yards away had been joined to the island by a causeway, where once a steel boat dug its way over the shallowing khor. A tramline brought truckloads of freight, pushed by a varied assortment of blacks. Long lines of swathed women marched down to the stream with their earthenware pots, for the water is bad in the stagnant khor. Women they were of all sizes, and ranging in tint from jet to the colour of coffee. Wee lassies brought gourds or small pots, and gravely mimicked the work of their mothers, wrapping their scanty garments tight round their thighs as they stepped knee-deep in the stream. Their little backs straightened as they