428 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

We sank in this nearly to the knees, and slid backward at each step at least half as far as we had stepped forward. We were obliged to rest every three or four steps, and take breath, moistening the sand meanwhile with a rain of sweat-drops.

" Surely there is no other mountain in the world so high as this," said the shekh, and I was ready to agree with him. At last we reached the top, a nearly level space of about ten acres.

There was a pleasant breeze here, but the Ethiopian world below was dozing in an atmosphere of blue heat. There was too much vapor in the air to see the farthest objects distinctly, and the pyramids of Noori, further up the river, on its eastern bank, were not visible. The Nile lay curved in the middle of the picture like a flood of molten glass, on either side its palmy " knots of paradise," then the wheat fields, lying like slabs of emerald against the tawny sands, that rolled in hot drifts and waves and long ridgy swells to the horizon north and south, broken here and there by the jagged porphyry peaks.

Before me, to the south-east, were the rugged hills of the Beyooda ; behind me, to the north and west, the burning wilderness of the Great Nubian Desert.

As I sought for my glass, to see the view more distinctly, I became aware that I had lost my pocket-book on the way up.

As it contained some money and all my keys, I was not a little troubled, and mentioned my loss to Shekh Mohammed. We immediately returned in search of it, sliding down the sand and feeling with our hands and feet therein. We had made more than half the descent, and I began to consider the search hopeless, when the shekh, who was a little in advance, cried out : " 0 Sidi ! God be praised ! God be praised ! " He saw the corner sticking out of the sand, took it up, kissed it.