44 IN A LAND DESERTED to one already well broken in to African journeying.

It is a good rule to see the baggage camels off early on their way to the midday halting-place, so that lunch may be awaiting one after a morning's stalk ; and never is it so fully realized how long is a stern chase than when, hot and weary, the tracks of these " tortoises " are followed with the knowledge that refreshment and siesta ensue on their overhauling.

This twenty miles lay between the Blue Nile and its tributary, the River Dinder, much of the way being by a new track through thick bush, offering every variety of jolt through the virgin roughness of the ground. The native town of Khamisa gave the first sight of the Dinder through a break in the vegetation, now merely a stream of sand with large deep pools at intervals, sometimes under the precipitous bank on this side, or stretching across to overhanging jungle opposite. The Dinder joins the Blue Nile 180 miles south-east of Khartoum, and the more easterly Rahad comes in at Wad INIedani, forty miles lower down. The general flow of all three rivers is north-west, and divergence in the direction of their sources is very gradual.

The African robin, black with scarlet breast, peeped at the white man resting in the shade ; small monkeys carefully crawled down to the water's edge, scared quickly by the slightest movement ; while elsewhere little children drove sheep and goats to water down the steep incline.