222 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

as a divan, and four stones, arranged so as to form' a fire-place. On returning to the shore, I found Achmet in dispute with the two men. He had taken some melons, for which he offered them two and a half piastres. They demanded more, hut as he had purchased melons for less in El Mekkeyref, he refused, and giving them the money, took the melons perforce.

" Well," said they, " you are our masters, and we must submit ;" hut they would sell no more to my sailors. The latter, however, procured a bowl of treacle, made of dates, and some sour milk, at another hut, and were contented therewith. The bean-fields along the shore had just been trampled down by a hippopotamus, whose huge foot-prints we saw in the soft mud near the water.

All day, we sailed between shores of vegetation, of the ripest green. Both banks of the river, through this region, are studded with water-wheels, whose creaking ceases not by day nor by night. It was pleasant to see the strings of jars ascending and descending, and to hear the cool plashing of the precious blood of the Nile, as it poured into the branching veins which are the life of that teeming soil. The wheels were turned by oxen, driven by Dinka slaves, who sang vociferous melodies the while, and the water was conveyed to fields distant from the river in the hollow trunks of the doumtree.

There, where I expected to sail through a wilderness, I found a garden. Ethiopia might become, in other hands, the richest and most productive part of Africa. The people are industrious and peaceable, and deserve better masters. Their dread of the Turks is extreme, and so is their hatred. I stopped one evening at a little village on the western bank. The