228 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

nature she ever betrayed. Beshir's declaration that she was a hundred and fifty years old, roused her to fury. She rose up, turned to me with a face so hideously distorted that I could not laugh at it, and yelled out : " Look at me, 0 my lord ! and tell me if this son of a dog speaks the truth ! " " He lies, Bakhita," I answered ; " I should say that you were not more than thirty years old." The fury of her face was instantly replaced by a simper of vanity which made it even more hideous; but from that time Bakhita considered me as her friend. Beshir, who never missed an opportunity of hailing the people on shore, called out one day to a damsel who came down to the river for water : " Here is your sister on board." The amiable maiden, not at all pleased with the comparison, rejoined : " Am I sister to a hyena ? " — a compliment, over which the old woman chuckled for a long time.

The wind fell at sunset, when we were about seven miles from Meroe, and while the sailors moored the boat to the shore and built a fire to cook the head and ribs of my sheep, I climbed the bank, to get a sight of the country. As far as I could see, the soil was cultivated, principally with cotton and dourra.

The cotton was both in flower and pod, and was of excellent quality. Achmet and I visited a water mill, under the charge of a Dinka slave, who came up humbly and kissed our hands We commanded him to go on with his work, when he took his seat on the beam of the wheel and drove his cows around, to the accompaniment of a loud, shrill song, which, at a distance harmonized strangely with the cry of the jackal, in the deserts away beyond the river.