274 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

more than half grown, and ha"d all the wiles of an intelligent kitten, climbing his post and springing upon me, or creeping up slyly and seizing my ankle in his mouth. The garden, which was watered by a well and string of buckets turned by an ox, had a rich variety of fruit trees. The grape season was just over, though I had a few of the last bunches ; figs were ripening from day to day, oranges and lemons were in fruit and flower, bananas blooming for another crop, and the pomegranate and Mshteh, or custard-apple, hung heavy on the branches. There was also a plantation of date-trees and sugar-cane, and a great number of ornamental shrubs.

In all these picturesque features of my residence in Khartoum, I fully realized that I had at last reached Central Africa. In our mode of life, also, there was a rich flavor of that barbaric pomp and state which one involuntarily associates with the name of Soudan. We arose at dawn, and at sunrise were in the saddle. Sometimes I mounted the red stallion, of the wild breed of Dar-Fur, and sometimes one of the Consul's tall and fleet dromedaries. Six dark attendants, in white and scarlet dresses, followed us on dromedaries, and two grooms on foot ran before us, to clear a way through the streets. After passing through Khartoum, we frequently made long excursions up the banks of the two Niles, or out upon the boundless plain between them. In this way, I speedily became familiar with the city and its vicinity, and as, on our return, I always accompanied the Consul on all his visits to the various dignitaries, I had every opportunity of studying the peculiar life of the place, and gaining some idea of its governing principles.

As the only city of Central Africa which has a regular communication with the Mediterranean (by which it occasionally