174 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

I found dromedary-riding not at all difficult. One sits on a very lofty seat, with his feet crossed over the animal's shoulders or resting on his neck. The body is obliged to rock backward and forward, on account of the long, swinging gait, and as there is no stay or fulcrum except a blunt pommel, around which the legs are crossed, some little power of equilibrium is necessary. My dromedary was a strong, stately beast, of a light cream color, and so even a gait, that it would bear the Arab test : that is, one might drink a cup of coffee, while going on a full trot, without spilling a drop. I found a great advantage in the use of the Oriental costume. My trowsers allowed the legs perfect freedom of motion, and I soon learned so many different modes of crossing those members, that no day was sufficient to exhaust them. The rising and kneeling of the animal is hazardous at first, as his long legs double together like a carpenter's rule, and you are thrown backwards and then forwards, and then backwards again, but the trick of it is soon learned. The soreness and fatigue of which many travellers complain, I never felt, and I attribute much of it to the Frank dress. I rode from eight to ten hours a day, read and even dreamed in the saddle, and was at night as fresh and unwearied as when I mounted in the morning.

My caravan was accompanied by four Arabs. The guide, Eyoub, was an old Ababdeh, who knew all the Desert between the Red Sea and the Nile, as far south as Abyssinia. The camel-drivers were of the great Bisharee tribe, which extends from Shendy, in Ethiopia, through the eastern portion of the Nubian Desert, to the frontiers of Egypt. They owned the burden camels, which they urged along with the cry of " Yoho ! Shekh Abd-el Kader ! " and a shrill barbaric song, the