PYRAMIDS OF JNIEROE the same night. Three days later Shekh Shellabi arrived with his men and the antiquities, and we made ready to go to the Pyramids of Meroe, where we intended to clear up certain work which I had been obliged to leave unfinished in 1903. We sent one of our men who had been taken very ill with fever at Gazirat al-Malik to the Military Hospital, where under the care of the British Director he received every attention ; the same kind-hearted surgeon treated another man—who, in helping to move a big stone, had torn a hole in the side of his leg—with success and healed him. As we had grave doubts about the possibility of finding labour near the Pyramids of Meroe, the Inspector made arrangements to take on by train the best of the men who had been with us from Sulb to Sarras, and when we had done with them to draft them on to the railway between Atbara and the Red Sea, which was then in course of construction. The Inspector paid their railway fare, and their wages up to date, so that they might have means wherewith to obtain provisions sufficient for their needs during their stay with us. Major Midwinter, the Commandant, Mr. C, G. Hodgson, Locomotive Superintendent, and the civilian railway officials, the Hon. H. G. G. Pelham and Mr. W, H, Horton, gave us most friendly assistance, and on the third day after our return to Haifa we left by the train de luxe for Shendi, which we reached the next evening. Here I enjoyed the hospitality for which the Railway Mess is famous throughout the Sudan.

Having accomplished the object for which we had visited Shendi on the following morning, we left by the North Express the same evening, and about 10 p.m. arrived at Kabushia, the station nearest the Pyramids. About 2 p.m. the next day Shekh Shellabi and the workmen arrived in the truck with the antiquities, and an hour later we were on our way to the Pyramids, which are about five miles distant to the north-east. By sunset our tents were pitched, and the camels had brought loads of water, and the workmen had lighted fires and were cooking their evening meals. There was a marked difference between the temperature of Semna and that of Meroe, for the air was now soft, and it was sufficiently warm to make sitting outside the tent in the evening pleasant.

The following morning the Inspector and I went over the ground and marked the work which the men were to do. We VOL. I. 497 K k