NUBIAN GRATITUDE. 447 for the boat, and it was easy to divine her name : The Nu* Han. We had on board a number of copper-hned women, whose eyelids were stained with Icohl, which gave them a ghastly appearance.

Soon after my tent had been pitched, in the afternoon, a man came riding up from the river on a donkey, leading a horse behind him. He had just crossed one of the watersourses on his donkey, and was riding on, holding the horse's rope in his hand, when the animal started back at the watercourse, jerking the man over the donkey's tail and throwing him violently on the ground. He lay as if dead for a quarter of an hour, but Achmet finally brought him to consciousness by pouring the contents of a leathern water-flask over his head, and raising him to a sitting posture. His brother, who had marge of a sakia on the bank, brought me an angareb in the evening, in acknowledgment of this good office. It is a good trait in the people, that they are always grateful for kindness. The angareb, however, did not prove of much service, for I was so beset by the black gnats that it was impossible to sleep.

They assailed my nose, mouth, ears and eyes in such numbers that I was almost driven mad. I rubbed my face with strong vinegar, but it only seemed to attract them the more. I unwound my turban, and rolled it around my neck and ears, but they crept under the folds and buzzed and bit until I was forced to give up the attempt.

Our road, the next morning, lay near the river, through tracks of thick halfeh, four or five feet high. "We constantly passed the ruins of villages and the naked frames of abandoned sakias. The soil was exceedingly rich, as the exuberant growth of halfeh proved, but for miles and miles there was no