MY LODGING IN HANDAK. 451 broken wall, holding the camels, he went to look for our men.

It was a dismal place, in the gathering darkness, with the wind howling and the sand drifting on all sides, and I wondered what fiend had ever tempted me to travel in Africa. Before long the woman appeared and guided us to a collection of miserable huts on the top of the hill. Her fine house proved to be a narrow, mud-walled room, with a roof of smoked dourra-stalks. It shut off the wind, however, and when I entered and found the occupants (two other women), talking to each other by the light of a pile of blazing corn-stalks, it looked absolutely cheerful. I stretched myself out on one of the angarebs, and soon relapsed into a better humor. But I am afraid we were not lodged in the most respectable house of Handak, for the women showed no disposition to leave, when we made preparations for sleeping. They paid no attention to my requests, escept by some words of endearment, which, from such creatures, were sufficiently disgusting, and I was obliged to threaten them with forcible ejection, before they vacated the house. The camel-men informed me that the place is notorious for its harlotry.

As we had made a forced march of forty miles in one day, I gave the caravan a rest until noon, and treated the men to mutton and mareesa. Prices had already increased, since leaving Soudan, and I could not procure a sheep for less than seventeen piastres. The women, who had returned at sunrise, begged me to give them the entrails, which they cut into pieces and ate raw, with the addition of some onions and salt. The old woman told me a piteous tale of the death of her son, and her own distress, and how King Dyaab (who had passed through Handak the day previous, on his way to Dar El-Ma-