398 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

tried a number of expedients, to get the upper hand of me, I drilled them into absolute obedience, and found their character much improved thereby. With my dromedary, whom I called Abou-Sin, (the Father of Teeth), from the great shekh of the Shukoree Arabs, to whom he originally belonged, I was soon on good terms. He was a beast of excellent temper, with a spice of humor in his composition, and a fondness for playing practical jokes. But as I always paid them back, neither party could complain, though Abou-Sin sometimes gurgled out of his long throat a string of Arabic gutturals, in remonstrance. He came up to my tent and knelt at precisely the same hour every evening, to get his feed of dourra, and when I was at breakfast always held his lips pursed up, ready to take the pieces of bread I gave him. My men, whom I agreed to provide with food during the journey, were regaled every day with mutton and mareesa, the two only really good things to be found in Soudan. A fat sheep cost 8 piastres (40 cents), and we killed one every three days. The meat was of excellent flavor. Mareesa is made of the coarse grain called dourra, which is pounded into flour by hand, mixed with water, and heated over a fire in order to produce speedy fermentation. It is always drunk the day after being made, as it turns sour on the third day. It is a little stronger than small beer, and has a taste similar to wheat bran, unpleasant on the first trial and highly palatable on the second. A jar holding two gallons .. K" costs one piastre, and as few families, however poor, are without it, we always found plenty of it for sale in the villages. It is nutritious, promotive of digestion, and my experience went to prove that it was not only a harmless but most wholesome drink in that stifling climate. Om bilbil, the mother of nightingaleSj