204 " CREWE JUNCTION " OF THE NILE as we pass the spots where their owners have fallen to somebody's rifle.

On the ghayassa we are towing are some 30 tons of dhurra, looking for all the world like coarse gravelly sand. It is to prove useful in getting into friendly touch with the Nuer tribes up the river, who had until very recently declined to submit themselves to Government rule, and had from early days been hostile and suspicious of Europeans. There was particular interest, therefore, in going among a people so fresh to intercourse with civiUzation.

In the stern of the boat is the little cockpit where poor withered old JMary Ann, stripped to the waist, drudges at her patient slavery. She is cook for the sailors, and was doubtless a slave in her time. Bending on her knees, with a flat stone before her, spitting on her hands, she grinds the moistened dhurra on it with a smaller stone, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, till one wearies with the ceaseless movement. Only once does she stop, to project overboard with remarkable accuracy and force a mouthful of saliva.

Later on she sits beside an iron plate, well greased with rancid fat or butter, over her wood fire ; a gourdful of her porridge-like flour is placed on the plate, spread out till it forms a thin circular wafer some IG inches across, and covered by a basket it bakes quickly into the kisra, or unleavened bread, of the East. When meat is on hand she cooks stew in the great iron pot, and her work is