KORTI AND AMBUKOL. 439 The next morning was hot and sultry, with not a breath of air stirring. I rose at dawn and walked ahead for two hours, through thickets of euphorbia higher than my head, and over patches of strong, dark-green grass. The salcias were groaning all along the shore, and the people every where at work in the fields. The wheat was in various stages of growth, from the first thick green of the young blades to the full head.

Barley was turning a pale yellow, and the dookhn, the heads of which had already been gathered, stood brown and dry.

Djebel Deeka, on my right, rose bold and fair above the lines of palms, and showed a picturesque glen winding in between its black-purple peaks. It was a fine feature of the landscape, which would have been almost too soft and lovely without it.

Before nine o'clock we passed the large town of Korti, which, however, is rather a cluster of small towns, scattered along between the wheat-fields and the river. Some of the houses were large and massive, . and with their blank walls and block-like groups, over which the doum-tree spread its arch and the date-palm hung its feathery crown, made fine African pictures — admirable types of the scenery along the Nubian Nile. Beyond the town we came upon a hot, dusty plain, sprinkled with stunted euphorbia, over which I could see the point where the Nile turns westward. Towards noon we reached the town of Ambukol, which I found to be a large agglomeration of mud and human beings, on the sand-hills, a quarter of a mile from the river. An extensive pile of mud in the centre denoted a fortress or government station of some sort. There were a few lazy Arabs sitting on the ground, on the shady side of the walls, and some women going back and forth with water-jars, but otherwise, for all the life it present-