VISIT FEOM THE KASHIF. 433 Dinner was ready at sunset, the appointed time, but the Kashif did not come. I waited one hour, two hours 5 still he came not. Thereupon I invited Achmet and the shekh, and we made an excellent dinner in Turkish style. It was just over, and I was stretched out without jacket or tarboosh, enjoying my pipe, when we heard the ferrymen singing on the river below, and soon afterwards the Kashif appeared at the door. He apologized, saying he had been occupied in his divan. I had dinner served again, and tasted the dishes to encourage him, but it appeared that he had not been able to keep his appetite so long, and had dined also. Still, he ate enough to satisfy me that he relished my dishes, and afterwards drank a sherbet of sugar and vinegar with great gusto. He had three or four attendants, and with him came a Berber merchant, who had lately been in Khartoum. I produced my sketch-book and maps, and astonished the company for three hours. I happened to have a book of Shaksperean views, which I had purchased in Stratford-on-Avon. The picture of Shakspere gave the Kashif and shekh great delight, and the former considered the hovel in which the poet was born, " very grand." The church in Stratford they thought a marvellous building, and the merchant confessed that it was greater than Lattif Pasha's palace in Khartoum, which he had supposed to be the finest building in the world.

The next morning the shekh proposed going with me to the remains of a temple, half an hour distant, on the eastern bank of the river ; the place, he said, where the people found the little images, agates and scarabei, which they brought to me in great quantities. After walking a mile and a half over the sands, which have here crowded the vegetation to the very 19