254 WITH THE CAMEL CORPS UP THE NILE.

Nile. Its chief raison d'etre as a camping-ground lay in its sanitary claims, for it was an alluvial soil on a gravel bed whatever that may be. Be that as it may, I should not have been anxious to stop there a week, let alone three months.

Next morning we were off betimes, and, with a good breeze from the east, passed Shabadud and Handak about 10 a.m. The heat was already beginning to get unpleasant, and so were the flies at our midday meal. We did as much as we could that day, and encamped at a place about fourteen miles above Dongola.

That evening, as we lay comfortably in the sand after dinner, smoking our pipes before we turned in, two gigantic spiders made their appearance in our midst. Up we all jumped, over went lanterns and plates, and it was not till C had valiantly slain the beasts with a slipper that we ventured to return to our places. It's all very well to laugh and to treat spiders with contempt, but a bite from one of these brutes is no joke. Imagine a yellow brute with two pairs of beaks, a body rather longer than your thumb, and eight long