458 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

and groves of date trees wasting their vigor in rank, unpruned shoots. The edge of the Desert was covered with grave-yards to a considerable extent, each one boasting its cluster of pyramids and cones, raised over the remains of holy shekks. Towards noon I dismounted for breakfast in a grove of sont trees, but had no sooner seated myself on my carpet, than the small black flies came in such crowds that I was scarcely able to eat. They assailed my temples, ears, eyes and nostrils, and it was utterly impossible to drive them away. I was half crazy with the infliction, and at night my neck and temples were swollen and covered with blotches worse than those made by mosquito stings In fact, mosquitoes are mild and merciful in comparison. Had not my road been mostly in the Desert, away from the trees, I could scarcely have endured the journey. The few inhabitants along the river kindled fires of green wood and sat in the smoke.

In the afternoon the monotony of the Desert on the western bank was broken by a solitary mountain of a remarkable form.

It precisely resembled an immense coffin, the ends being apparently cut square off, and as the effect of a powerful mirage lifted it above the horizon, it seemed like the sarcophagus of the Prophet, in the Kaaba, to be suspended between heaven and earth. The long island of Argo, which I saw occasionally across an Arm of the Nile, appeared rich and well cultivated.

It belongs mostly to Melek Hammed, King of Dongola, who was expected at home the day I passed, on his return from Cairo, where he had been three months or more, for the purpose of representing to Abbas Pasha the distressed condition of the country, and obtaining some melioration of the system of misrule inflicted upon it. Near the town of Argo, on the