THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN After climbing the steep gradient from Ambigol Wells, we ran down a long incline amid most weird and striking scenery, if this word can be applied to the wild and shapeless masses of rocks which were piled up in fantastic heaps on both sides of the line. The khors and ravines were brilliantly lit by a moon nearly at the full, which hung clear of the sky like a massof shining silver, and shone with such splendour that the stars were almost invisible. The \ ellow wind-blown sand, which lay in ridges on the slopes of the hills and in patches at their rocky feet, had a slightly ruddy tint, and the shadows cast by the rocks were strikingly inky in their blackness. As the speed of the train slackened from time to time, the shrill cries of the "children of yells," as the Arabs call the jackals, could be heard, and they added a strange weirdness to what was an enchanting fairy scene. The locomotive, leaving behind it a trail of black smoke, did not seem out of place in the primeval chaos which surrounded us ; on the contrary, it might well have appeared to the denizens of that rocky wilderness to be one of the rushing fiery monsters with which the ancient inhabitants of the country peopled the desert.

Quite close to the caravan road from Haifa to Akasha, and about five miles to the north of the latter place, is the sulphur well of Ukmah or Okmah, which is famous among the Cataract folk for its cures of scrofulous diseases, and we had on the train two natives who had come from Cairo to bathe in its waters. Above the well are the remains of a building which is called after the name of " our lord Solomon " {sayyidna Suletndn), but the construction is quite modern. Under it several little hot springs rise, and he who seeks a cure there causes his friends to dig a hole in the warm mud near them large enough to hold him, and then they place him in it and cover him over with mud. The place is, of course, under the protection of the Prophet, and no cure can be effected without his blessing. There is no doubt that those who suffer from rheumatism obtain benefit from such bathing in the warm sulphur mud, but the supply of water is limited at the best of times, and during the Inundation the place is entirely swamped by the flood, and the healing waters are lost in it. There are other hot springs in the neighbourhood, but none has the reputa-' Bandt diva.

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