476 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

range of Djebel El-Lamool, beyond the Nile, served him as a guide. He looked occasionally towards a bastion-like projection in the sheer walls of porphyry, and at last, when I was quite tired and famished, took us up a ridge whence I saw the river again below us. The road into the valley was next to impracticable, but our camels stumbled and scrambled and slid till they reached the ledge of halfeh overhanging the river.

Below us was a stpare mass of burnt brick, about ten feet in height — part of a building long since destroyed. " Here is the bath," said the hadji. We dismounted, and he conducted us to the foot of the ruin, where, in a hole in the earth, a spring of water bubbled up profusely, and trickled away, through a trough of stones. There was an end of my anticipations of a refreshing bath, for which I had come prepared.

The water was hot enough, in truth (131°), and I could not bear my hand below the surface. Under the bank, a dozen springs with a saialler flow of water, oozed through the soil, which was covered with a whitish deposit in places. To atone for my disappointment, I took breakfast in the shadow of the ruined wall, while my camel-men bathed themselves in the wa-.

ter, with many exclamations of " BismiTlahi! '" (In the name of G-od). The hadji then left us, and we followed the Nile past the cataracts of Song and Tangoori, which latter we heard all night, roaring grandly between the gusts of wind.

During the night the wind blew violently, and I had great fears that my tent would come down about my ears. I heaped the sand against it on the outside, for further protection, but every thing within was so covered that its original color could no longer be discerned. The moon shone between wild and stormy clouds, and all signs betokened a gust of rain. We