THE SHEKH OF BAGRAWIYA the top of the bank, and he turned out to be the owner of the dhiirra which we had been trampHng upon, and the shekh of the district. He was tall and thin, and his features were of the regular Sudani (not Negro) type ; his head was clean-shaven, and his only garment was a long strip of native cotton stuff which he wound round him. His name was Muhammad Ibrahim al-Amin, and he saluted me by uncovering his right shoulder.

When the steamer had gone on up the river the shekh took me by a winding path through the scrub to the clearing where his tukiil was, and showed me a place where the tent might be pitched. In the course of conversation with him I found that he had formerly been in the Egyptian Arm.y, and had served under General Gordon in 1877, and he produced papers containing instructions to him which had been signed by Gordon himself.

Like most people in the Sudan he had suffered greatly under the rule of the Dervishes, and was practically reduced to beggary. I never understood how he had escaped death, or how he had managed to settle himself on the land again, but there he was, and quite willing to give me help if he could. The tukul, wherein 265