402 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

loose without his load and Said trying to catch him. My provision-chests were tumbled upon the ground, the cafass broken to pieces and the chickens enjoying the liberty of the Desert.

Said, it seemed, had stopped to talk with some women, leaving the camel, which was none too gentle, to take care of himself.

Achmet was so incensed that he struck the culprit in the face, whereupon he cried out, with a rueful voice : uya Jchosara /" (oh, what a misfortune !). After half an hour's labor the boxes were repacked, minus their broken crockery, the chickens caught and the camel loaded. The inhabitants of this region were mostly Shygheeans, who had emigrated thither. They are smaller and darker than the people of Mahass, but resemble them in character. In one of the villages which we passed, the soog, or market, was being held. I rode through the crowd to see what they had to sell, but found only the simplest articles : camels, donkeys, sheep, goats ; mats, onions, butter, with some baskets of raw cotton and pieces of stuff spun and woven by the natives. The sales must be principally by barter, as there is little money in the country.

In the afternoon we passed another akaba, even more difficult for camels than that of Gerri. The tracks were rough and stony, crossed by frequent strata of granite and porphyry.

From the top of one of the ridges I had a fine view of a little valley of mimosas which lay embayed in the hills and washed by the Nile, which here curved grandly round from west to south, his current glittering blue and broad in the sun. The opposite bank was flat and belted with wheat fields, beyond which stretched a gray forest of thorns and then the yellow savannas of Shendy, walled in the distance by long, blue, broken ranges of mountains. The summit of a hill near our road was