MERAWI IN 1897 ground. Things being thus, I returned to the shekh's house, and hired his guest-chamber, wherein he had already placed the baggage, and had, I believe, intended me to live all along. This chamber was built on to the end of his house, but could not be entered from it, and was to all intents and purposes a separate building ; it was about fourteen feet long, eight feet wide, and eight feet high, and was roofed with palm-branches. High up in an outer wall were several openings, and along the same wall ran a mastaba, or " bench," made of mud, on which the occupants might spread their mats and bed-carpets, and sit or sleep. When several inches of the floor had been shovelled out and a new roof put on it became habitable. The sloping sides and flat roof gave it something of the appearance of an Egyptian tomb, and Slatin Pasha neatly expressed the general opinion of the officers when one day he chalked on the front in large capitals the name " Mummy House." The chief drawback to this hut was the heat in the daytime, for the sun's ra3's poured on its front for hours each day, and then it was impossible to live inside it. There was a small court in front with a wall about two feet high running round it, and this we decided to roof over. The shekh and his brother readily agreed to build a rdkiiba for me, and set about it without delay. The methods of the workmen were primitive and interesting. They dug the holes in the ground for the supports with their hands, they burned the ends of the palm trunks for the roof in a fire until they were of the right length, they twisted ropes of palm fibre, which was stripped from the trees as wanted, and they made a palm tree, which they declared God had placed there for my special benefit, serve as the support for one end of the rakilba. I pointed out that the use of the palm-tree as a support was unsatisfactory, for the simple reason that when the tree, which was a high one, rocked, it must loosen the ropes, and let the poles fall. The shekh's brother, who was said to be very clever in such matters, assured me that the rdkuba would " never fall ; " but all the same, three nights later, during a high wind, it did fall, and had I not moved my bed to the other end earlier in the night, it would have fallen upon me. The builder was not at all disturbed by this, for he told me that my escape was a proof of the special favour in which 207