SCENERY AND INHABITANTS. 223 sailors were sent to the houses to procure fowls and eggs, and after a long time two men appeared, bringing, as they said, the only chicken in the place. They came up slowly, stooped and touched the ground, and then laid their hands on their heads, signifying that they were as dust before my feet. Achmet paid them the thirty paras they demanded, and when they saw that the supposed Turks had no disposition to cheat them, they went back and brought more fowls. Travellers who go by the land routes give the people an excellent character for hospitality. I was informed that it is almost impossible to buy anything, even when double the value of the article is tendered, but by asking for it as a favor, they will cheerfully give whatever they have.

When I crept out of my tent on the third niorning, the features of the scenery were somewhat changed. A blue chain of hills, which we had passed in the night, lay behind us, and a long, graceful mountain range rose on the right, broken by a pass which was cut through it at right angles to its course.

The mountains retreated out of my horizon during the forenoon, but in the afternoon again approached nearly to the water's edge, on the eastern bank. They were of a dark-red color, exhibiting a broken, mound-like formation. We passed several islands during the day — beds of glorious vegetation. The sakias were turning at intervals of a hundred yards or less, and the rustling fields of wheat and dourra seemed bursting with the fulness of their juices. I now began to notice that warm vermilion tinge of the clouds, which is frequently exhibited near the Equator, but is nowhere so striking as in Central Africa. Lying heavily along the horizon, in the warm hours of the day, they appeared to glow with a dead, smould-