ISLAND OF NILWITTI no one knows where. When we saw the building it was quite uninhabitable.

After our visit to the " martyrium " we went to see the school in the village which Mr. Crowfoot had to inspect. We went to the mosque, in the buildings of which it was situated, and were received by a number of grave men who took us into the room where the schoolmaster was giving the boys a lesson. The children were seated on the ground and were engaged in learning by heart some verses from the Kur'an, but they were told to stand up, and to go into the courtyard and arrange themselves in a line. We went out and looked at them, and the Inspector asked the master questions about the subject of their lesson, and spoke to some of the boys. The_v were all dark-skinned; most of them were children from the neighbourhood, but a few came from a distance and boarded with the master. We looked at the queer little rooms in which they slept at night and marvelled. They were quite small, and had neither door nor window in them ; they were entered through little low openings which were close to the ground, and reminded one of the door of a rabbit hutch The Inspector seemed satisfied with what the boys were doing, and we each made a small present to the master to be spent as he thought best on their behalf. We were then taken into the other rooms of the mosque, and our guides led us into a court which had at one time been partially roofed over, but was now in a ruined condition. We asked what had caused this state of things, and they answered briefly, "The Dervishes." It seems that one of the Khalifa's hordes had invaded the island, and, wanting firewood, had deliberately wrecked the whole roof, and most of the building, in order to get the beams ! The natives of Dar Sukkot and Dar Mahass were hated by the Dervishes, and suffered greatly at their hands.

About nine o'clock we left the Island of Nilwitti, and two hours later we were abreast of the island of Sai, where we stopped and landed to go and look at some ruins which the natives were anxious for us to see. The island is about seven miles long, and in its widest part is about three miles wide The principal channel of the Nile is on the east side, for the channel on the west side dries up in the late spring. The natives of the island 457