464 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

heaped upon it, as a guide to caravans, and merely for descending this ridge there were at least two hundred of them. The plain now extended away to the north and east, bounded by a confusion of black, barren mountains, out of which rose two lofty peaks. Towards evening we met a Nubian family, with their donkeys, on their way southward. They begged for water, which we gave them, as their supply was entirely exhausted. I found a bed of hard gravel large enough for my tent, but we had great difficulty in driving the pegs. The camel-men selected the softest places among the rocks for their beds, but the camels stretched their long necks on all sides in the vain search for vegetation. I sat at my tent door, and watched the short twilight of the South gather over the stony wilderness, with that strange feeling of happiness which the contemplation of waste and desolate landscapes always inspires. There was not a blade of grass to be seen ; the rocks, which assumed weird and grotesque forms in the twilight, were as black as ink; beyond my camp there was no life in the Desert except the ostrich and the hyena — yet I would not have exchanged the charm of that scene for a bower in the gardens of the Hesperides.

The dawn was glimmering gray and cold when I arose, and the black summits of the mountains showed dimly through a watery vapor. The air, however, was dry, though cool and invigorating, and I walked ahead for two hours, singing and shouting from the overflow of spirits. I hoped to catch a glimpse of the Nile before mounting my dromedary, but one long black ridge of stones rose after another, and there was no sudden flash of green across the darkness of the Desert. At last, towards noon, through a notch in the drear and stony