MY RESIDENCE AT ABDOM. 42C brilliantly-colored palm blades. Fancy vessels of baked clay, baskets, ostrich eggs, and other ornaments were suspended from the roof in slings of palm fibre, and a very large white mat covered half the floor. Here my bed was laid, and my camp-stool, placed in front of it, formed a table. The Shekh, who was with me nearly all the time of my stay, sat on the floor in front of me, and never entered or departed from the house, without saying " Bismillahi" ("in the name of G-od"), as he crossed the threshold. Outside of the door was a broad divan, running along the north side of the house. It therefore pointed towards Mecca and was a most agreeable praying-place for the holy man. On my arrival, after first having taken a bath in the Nile, I sat there the rest of the day, tasting the luxury of coolness and shade, and steeping my eyes in the balm of refreshing colors. A clump of some twenty date-trees grew in front of the door, throwing over us a gorgeous canopy of leaves. Fields of wheat in head, waist-deep, surrounded the house, insulating it in a sea of greenness, over which I saw the hills of the Desert, no longer terrible, but soft and fair and far as clouds smouldering in the roseate fires of an Eastern sunrise.

Very early the next morning the Shekh and his sons and their asses were in readiness to accompany me to Djebel Berkel.

We walked down between the Shekh's gardens to the Nile, where the ferry-boat was waiting to convey us across. I was enchanted with the picture which the shores presented. The air was filled with a light, silvery vapor (a characteristic of sultry weather in Africa), softening the deep, rich color of the landscape. The eastern bank was one bower of palms, standing motionless, in perfect groups, above the long, sloping banks