15 4: JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

men, dating from the times of the Saracens. A thin palmgrove somewhat concealed the barren aspect of the city, but our glances passed it, to rest on the distant hills, kindling in the setting sun.

The island is inhabited by Nubians, and some twenty or thirty children, of from six to ten years of age — the boys entirely naked, the girls wearing the rcihad, a narrow leathern girdle, around the loins — surrounded us, crying " backslieesli ! '" and offering for sale bits of agate, coins, and fragments of pottery. Some of them had cunning but none. of them intelligent faces, and their large black eyes had an astonishingly precocious expression of sensuality. We bought a few trifles and tried to dismiss them, but their numbers increased, so that by the time we had made the tour of the island we had a retinue of fifty followers. I took the branches of henna they offered me and switched the most impudent of them, but they seemed then to consider that they had a rightful claim to the backsheesh, and were more importunate than ever. As we left, they gathered on the shore and sang us a farewell chorus, but a few five para pieces, thrown among them, changed the harmony into a scramble and a fight, in which occupation these lovely children of Nature were engaged until we lost sight of them.

The next day we visited Philse. We took donkeys and a guide and threaded the dismal valley of Saracenic tombs south of the town, into a pass leading through the granite hills.

The landscape was wintry in its bleakness and ruggedness.

The path over which we rode was hard sand and gravel, and on both sides the dark rocks were piled in a thousand wonderful combinations. On the surface there is no appearance of regular strata, but rather of some terrible convulsion, which