A SUDANESE MARKET-PLACE 183 find their way everywhere ; pushing to a degree, if not too rehable, their assistance is invaluable. But their very powers of self-adaptation render them little respected by natives, who scarcely consider them white men, and look with contempt at the " Greeky."

Housewives surrounded the stall of the butcher's shop, crowded with quaint pieces of meat ; drapers made much of their cottons and cloths. The long sheet which provides the dark lady with a dress of unvarying fashion in shape was gi-eatly in evidence, while the shop hard by had its little panniers of lentils and other produce of the soil.

Native salt, dirty and hard, in cones, with admixture of the dirt it was evaporated on to, was on sale as a valuable article of barter, as were brass wire and beads.

On the shore a strange sight was provided. Far down-river a number of Arabs arrived with their boats. They were fishermen by trade, making their living by catching and selling the great semmuck of the Nile, and were engaged in skinning and scahng them as the purchasers came round. The size of these fish is enormous, and their flesh really good. I have reason to believe that it palls on the taste after many months' diet ; but to me, fresh from the tinned food of the march, it was luxury.

Many were 7 feet long, and their wide-open mouths were immense.

Now came a small flock of sheep, brought in by travelling Arabs, who expected a price which they