262 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

tants cultivate but a narrow strip of beans and dourra along, the river, but own immense flocks of sheep and goats, which afford their principal sustenance. I noticed many fields of the grain called doolckn, of which they plant a larger quantity than of dourra. Mutton, however, is the Ethiopian's greatest delicacy. Notwithstanding this is one of the warmest climates in the world, the people eat meat whenever they can get it, and greatly prefer it to vegetable food. The sailors and cameldrivers, whose principal food is dourra, are, notwithstanding a certain quality of endurance, as weak as children, when compared with an able-bodied European, and they universally attribute this weakness to their diet. This is a fact for the lank vegetarians to explain. My experience coincided with that of the Ethiopians, and I ascribed no small share of my personal health and strength, which the violent alternations of heat and cold during the journey had not shaken in the least, to the fact of my having fared sumptuously every day.

After leaving Shendy, the Nile makes a bend to the west, and we went along slowly all the afternoon, with & side-wind. The shores were not so highly cultivated as *hose we had passed and low hills of yellow sand began to show themselves on either hand. The villages were groups of mud toTculs, with high, conical roofs, and the negro type of face appeared much more frequently among the inhabitants — the result of amalgamation with slaves. We saw numbers of young crocodiles which my sailors delighted to frighten by shouting and throwing sticks at them, as they sunned themselves on the sand. Wild geese and ducks were abundant, and the quiet little coves along the shore were filled with their young brood. During the day a large hawk or vulture dashed down to within a yard