A SAINT MIRACULOUS FISHING. 365 village, uttering sharp yells of joy as they went. After they had left, I asked the men whether what I had heard in Khartoum, concerning the peculiar conjugal customs of the tribe, was true, and they replied that it was.

As we were about leaving, one of the shekhs, or holy men of the tribe, came down to greet me. He was an old man in a blue cotton mantle, and had with him two attendants. After touching my hand twice and asking many times for my health, he commenced singing passages of the Koran, in a loud, resonant, and not unmusical tone, somewhat resembling the sunset cry of the muezzin from his minaret. The two others responded, and thus this religious entertainment was kept up for some time. But the rais was at his post and the wind had fallen, so I acted my despotic character of Sultan, by leaving the holy man in the midst of his chanting and going on board. When we left he was still standing under the mimosas, singing of Mohammed, the Prophet of God.

We made but little headway during the afternoon, although the men worked faithfully. Djebel Deyoos, whose loose cluster of peaks is seen for a great distance over the plains of Kordofan, still kept us company, and did not pass out of our horizon until the next evening. The men towed for several hours, and as the shore was flat and the river very shallow they were obliged to walk in the water. While Achmet was preparing dinner, a fish about the size of a herring vaulted upon deck and fell at his feet. He immediately clapped it into the frying-pan and presented me with an acceptable dish. To his unbounded astonishment and my great satisfaction, the same thing happened three days in succession, at precisely the same hour. " Wallah, master ! " he exclaimed : " it