50 IN A LAND DESERTED nabbuk. In certain favoured spots one will find the sunt {Acacia arabica) particularly well grown, and the wood, though hard, is in demand as timber and firewood.

Here and there one will meet specimens, usually solitary or small in number, of the few trees which are stout enough to resist the mighty strength of the elephant : the baobab or tebeldi tree, often 30 or 40 feet round, useless as timber ; the tall kuk-tree ; and the tamarind, with its medicinal fruit and welcome shade.

The cheerful Fadl el Mullah betook himself to my instruction in the attributes of many objects, handing me an excess of the small round fruit of the nabbuk, whose stone is surrounded by a friable substance of neutral taste, which came in useful on at least one occasion, when a meal was in the far distance.

Many voided stones in the tracks of elephants showed the partiality of the great beast for the date-like fi'uit of the heglig, called lalub by my Arabs. The stone is large, and under a tough skin is covered with a bitter-sweet, astringent substance, which is also esteemed by the natives medicinally, while the kernel is productive in oil.

Parties passed en route had reported much game ahead, but such reports are highly unreliable as a rule, and made in order to please, for the moment, the unsophisticated among sportsmen.

The course of the Dinder here is erratic in the extreme, winding and bending round upon itself in