APPROACH TO EL METEMMA. 403 Burrounded with a thick wall, formed of natural blocks of black porphyry. It had square, projecting bastions at regular intervals, and an entrance on the western side. From its appearance, form and position, it had undoubtedly been a stronghold of some one of the Arab tribes, and can claim no great antiquity. I travelled on until after sunset, when, as no village appeared, I camped in a grove of large mimosas, not far from the Nile. A few Shygheean herdsmen were living in brush huts near at hand, and dogs and jackals howled incessantly through the night.

On the fifth day I reached the large town of El Metemma, nearly opposite Shendy, and the capital of a negro kingdom, before the Egyptian usurpation. The road, on approaching it, leads over a narrow plain, covered with a shrub resembling heather, bordered on one side by the river, and on the other by a long range of bare red sand-hills. "VVe journeyed for more than three hours, passing point after point of the hills, only to find other spurs stretching out ahead of us. From the intense heat I was very anxious to reach El Metemma, and was not a little rejoiced when I discerned a grove of date-trees, which had been pointed out to me from Shendy, a month before, as the landmark of the place. Soon a cluster of buildings appeared on the sandy slopes, but as we approached, I saw they were ruins. We turned another point, and reached another group of tokuls and clay houses — ruins also. Another point, and more ruins, and so for more than a mile before we reached the town, which commences at the last spur of the hills, and extends along the plain for a mile and a half.

It is a long mass of one-story mud buildings, and the most miserable place of its size that I have seen in Central Africa.