MERAWI IN 1897 front of him. As the fires burned they well nigh roasted him, and the effect of the heat on the new skin can well be imagined ; all water was kept from him, and after some hours of agony he admitted that his money was in the ground under his house.

Without extinguishing the fires the Dervishes rushed to his house, dug up the floor, pulled down the walls, and at length found eight thousand dollars tied up in small bags. Having released the unfortunate man, they carried off everything of use or value from EVENING PRAYER UNDER THE PALMS AT THE VILLAGE OF BARKAL.

his house, and then they sent out parties of men to lay waste his fields and to destroy his water-channels and water-wheels. As proof of the truth of his words the shekh showed me his broken and twisted nailless toes, and the weals across his back, and the scars of wounds made by the fires. When the Dervishes had " eaten up " all the villages of the Shaikiya Arabs in the neighbourhood they moved on and ate up villages elsewhere in the province, and when nine years later they fled before the Sirdar from Dongola, in 1896, the inhabitants consisted for the most part of old men and women, children and babies. The young men had been 211