418 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

the brink of the well, came near being precipitated to tha bottom.

Our road now turned to the north, through a gap in the low hills and over a tract of burnt, barren, rolling wastes of white sand and gravel Towards evening we came again to the river-bed, here broad.and shallow. This part of the Desert is inhabited by the Saurat and Huni tribes, and we saw large ■ herds of sheep and goats wherever the halfeh grass abounded.

At sunset there were no signs of the Nile, so I had the tent pitched in the middle of the dry river-channel. In front of us, on a low mound, the red walls of a ruined' building shone in the last rays of the sun.

The next day — the eighth since leaving El Metemma — was intensely hot and sultry, without a breath of air stirring. While walking towards the ruins, I came upon two herds of gazelles, so tame that I approached within thirty yards, and could plainly see the expression of surprise and curiosity in their dark eyes. When I came too near, they would bleat like lambs, bound away a little distance and then stop again. The building, which stood on the stony slope of a hill, was surrounded with loose walls, in a dilapidated condition. The foundation, rising about six feet above the earth, is stone, above which the walls are of brick, covered with a thin coating of cement. The building is about eighty feet in length by forty in breadth, but the walls which remain are not more than twenty feet high. It is believed to have been an ancient Coptic monastery, and probably dates from the earlier ages of Christianity. The ruins of other houses, built of loose stones, surround the principal edifice, which was undoubtedly a church, and the ground around is strewn with fragments of burnt brick