THE TWELFTH CATARACT. 265 fcered in the sun. The country was thickly populated, and the inhabitants were mostly of the Shygheean tribe — from Dar Shygheea, the region between Dongola and Berber. The sakias were tended bj Dinka slaves, as black as ebony, and with coarse, brutish faces, At one point on the eastern shore, opposite the island of Bendi, the natives had collected all their live stock, but for what purpose I could not learn. The shore was covered with hundreds of camels, donkeys, sheep, cows and goats, carefully kept in separate herds.

After threading ten miles of those island bowers, we approached Djebel Grerri, which we had seen all day, ahead of us.

The Nile, instead of turning westward around the flank of the mountain, as I had anticipated from the features of the landscape, made a sudden bend to the south, between a thick cluster of islands, and entered the hills. At this point there was a rapid, extending half-way across the river. The natives call it a shellal (cataract), although it deserves the name no more than the cataracts of Assouan and Wadi-Halfa. Adopting the term, however, which has been sanctioned by long usage, this is the Twelfth Cataract of the Nile, and the last one which the traveller meets before reaching the mountains of Abyssinia.

The stream is very narrow, compressed between high hills of naked red sandstone rock. At sunset we were completely shut in the savage solitude, and there we seemed likely to remain, for the wind came from all quarters by turns, and jammed the vessel against the rocks, more than once.

The narrow terraces of soil on the sides of the mountains were covered with dense beds of long, dry grass, and as we lay moored to the rocks, I climbed up to one of these, in spite of the rai's's warnings that I should fall in with lions and ser 12