382 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA. » which the Consul compounded into a sherbet of the most delicious flavor. King Dyaab drank my health with a profusion of good wishes, begging me to remain another week and accompany his caravan. His palace in Dar El-Mahass, he said, was entirely at my disposal and I must remain several weeks with him. But there is nothing so unpleasant to me as to postpone a journey after all the preparations are made, and I was reluctantly obliged to decline his invitation. I take pleasure, however, in testifying to the King's good qualities, which fully entitle him to the throne of Dar El Mahass, and were I installed in his capital of Kuke, as court-poet, I should certainly write a national ballad for the Mahassees, commencing in this wise : " El Melak Dyaab is a jolly old King, And a jolly old King is he," etc.

After the Melek had bestowed a parting embrace by throwing his arms around my waist and dropping his round head on my shoulder like a sixty-eight pound shot, he was sent home in state on the back of Sultan, the Dar-Fur stallion. The moonlight was so beautiful that the Consul and I accompanied Dr. Peney to his residence. The latter suggested another pipe in the open air of his court-yard, and awoke his Shillook slaves, who were lying asleep near the house, to perform a dance for our amusement. There were three — two males and a female — and their midnight dance was the most uncouth and barbaric thing I saw in Khartoum. They brandished their clubs, leaped into the air, alighting sometimes on one foot and sometimes on both, and accompanied their motions with a series of short, quick howls, not unlike the laughter of a hye-