A BARBARIC SCENE. 417 We arose by daybreak, hoping to reach, the Nile. After somewhat more than two hours' journey, we met a caravan of about three hundred camels, laden with bales of cotton drillings, for the clothing of the new regiments of soldiers then being raised in Soudan. The foremost camels were a mile from Bir Khannik, while the hindmost were still drinking at the well. The caravan had Kababish drivers and guides — wild, long-haired, half-naked Arabs, with spears in their hands and shields of hippopotamus hide on their shoulders. They told us we were still a day and a half from Merawe. We rode on to the well, which was an immense pit, dug in the open plain. It was about fifty feet deep, and the Arabs were obliged to draw the water in skins let down with ropes. The top curved into the well like a shallow bowl, from the earth continually crumbling down, and the mouth of the shaft was protected by trunks of trees, on which the men stood while they drew the water. Around the top were shallow basins lined with clay, out of which' the camels drank. The fierce Kababish were shouting and gesticulating on all sides as we rode up — some leading the camels to kneel and drink, some holding the water-skins, and others brandishing their spears and swords in angry contention. Under the hot sun, on the sandy plain, it was a picture truly mid- African in all its features. The water had an insipid, brackish taste, and I was very glad that I had prevented my Arabs from drinking all we had brought from the porphyry fountain of Djeekdud We watered our camels, however, which detained us long enough to see a fight between two of the Kababish guides. There were so many persons to interfere that neither could injure the other, but the whole group of actors and sympathizers, struggling on