A COUNTRY OF DESOLATION 47 let alone himself. In Southern Africa, also, the lion has to be taken more into consideration, though in my solitary experience there of meeting one, when armed with a twenty-bore shot gun, he fortunately rejected his opportunity.

The Blue Nile and Binder are certainly remarkable for an occasional picturesqueness, for the most part absent on the White Nile, which, owing to its great width, dwarfs the height of banks and bush or forest that in a smaller river have more influence on the landscape. At the wide sweeping bends of the stream this was particularly the case, when the water was blue in the late afternoon, and the latent colours of the country were freed from the binding thraldom of the tyrannous sun.

Quite a typical scene of this description is supplied by the small village of Durraba, 70 feet above the bank, at a majestic curve, the last post of even Arab civilization in this deserted country, where a few families were making a hard fight against drought and famine.

During the previous day we had met many small parties on their way down-river, consisting of families travelling to other localities to obtain scanty supplies of dhurra (Indian millet, or sorghum, the staple food of the Sudan), the crop of which had failed in this district.

Yet Sir Samuel Baker, passing only fifty miles away in 1861, reported the neighbouring country of the Rahad to be full of Arabs, with abundant supplies of corn.