MERAWI IN 1897 from the native women any old gold ornaments, and he wished to be introduced to Shekh Muhammad. His method was to persuade the women to exchange their old gold bangles, which were usually made of soft pure gold, for modern nine-carat bangles and a few strings of pretty glass bead made ia Austria, making of course a handsome profit on each transaction. He hoped that he would be as successful in the Sudan as he had been in Egypt, but the Dervishes had stripped the country so bare that he could do little more than sell his beads.

As the cold weather came on at Barkal, cases of chill and fever increased in the village, and the natives came to me daily for medicines. They knew that the soldiers across the river fell ill and were cured by the English hakhn (doctor), and they assumed, naturally perhaps, seeing that the British officers sometimes came over to look at the excavations, that I could obtain for them the medicines of the effects of which they had heard such fantastic stories. Natives all over the East assume that every traveller has a knowledge of medicines, and that he carries with him the things which will enable him to destroy the effects produced by the peculiar class of evil spirits which, they believe, attack the European. It is beyond them to understand that a knowledge of the effects of drugs and medicines has only been acquired by Europeans after long study and careful experiment, and the}- are firmly convinced that it was obtained in the first instance by magical means, and that the healing skill of the doctor is only a form of what mediaeval writers called " white magic." Men, and women also, would come and tell me gravely that early in the morning a "devil" had attacked them and hit them inside, but inquiry would show that they had been sleeping partly in and partly outside their huts, with insufficient covering, and that the cold about 3 a.m. had given them a chill. Others would come having eaten a large quantity of new dates, presumably unripe, and the pains of indigestion which followed were attributed not to the fermentation of the date juices, but to " spirits" of a malignant character.

This is not to be wondered at when we remember that many Sudani peoples believe that the world about them is filled with spirits, which live in the air, and water, and mountains, 219