CHAPTER XII WHERE LIVES PRIMITIVE MAN Here and there we had seen small parties of men making their way along the river-banks, enormously tall and stark-naked. Our Nuer passengers began to evince great interest, and conversations at the top of their voices were frequent. Then three or four ebony figures would be seen hiding shyly behind an ant-hill in the long grass ; their rahats of shredded palm-leaf proclaimed all but one to be married women, and when they perceived that the steamer had actually passed, the well-known characteristic prevailed over fear, and they mounted the ant-hill the better to see, and to give us the opportunity of appreciating—Eve 1 Owing to the heavy barges we were towing, progress had been very slow, and we had not made the way we expected. The spot where it had been decided to cut wood was still some distance away, and a stop had to be made at a place short of it. The felhng of timber and taking it on board took the whole of one day, the powerful Egyptian artillerymen working like slaves for the small extra 228