454 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

About two o'clock, we descried the minaret of El Ordee, its sugar-loaf top glittering white in the sun. The place was three or four miles distant, and we did not reach it until after more than an hour's travel. As we approached, it presented the usual appearance of the Nubian towns — a long line of blank mud walls, above which rise, perhaps, the second stories of a few more ambitious mud houses ; here a sycamore, there a palm or two, denoting a garden within ; a wide waste of sand round about, some filthy people basking in the sun, and a multitude of the vilest kind of dogs. Near the river there are some fine large gardens, as in Khartoum. I had already decided to stop two days, to rest my caravan, before commencing the long and toilsome march to Wadi-Halfa, but instead of hiring a house I went around the town and pitched my tent on the northern side, on a sandy plain, where I secured pure air and freedom from molestation by the inhabitants.

The morning after my arrival, the Governor, Khoorshid Bey, called at my tent, and I returned the visit in the afternoon. He was a stout, fair-skinned and brown-bearded man of thirty-eight, and looked more like an American than a Turk. I found him in the shop of a Turkish merchant, opposite the door of the mosque, which is built in the centre of the bazaar.

Two soldiers were in attendance, and brought me coffee and sherbet. The Bey was particularly anxious to know whether the railroad from Alexandria to Cairo would be built, and how much it would cost. While I was sitting with him, the mollahs were chanting in the mosque opposite, as it was the Moslem Sunday, and groups of natives were flocking thither to say their prayers. Presently the voice of the muezzin was heard from the top of the minaret, chanting in a loud, nielo*