1200 THE DOWNFALL OF THE DERVISHES been known to fashion old tin biscuit boxes into a species of wind instrument. Just as I got within the zeriba, a squad of these blacks were giving hot chase to a curious animal, which had been put up in the bush. The hunted creature ran between my horse’s legs; it had a fine brush, with mottled fur, and looked like a wolverine or some beast of that kind.

The area required for some twenty - two thousand men, with hundreds of camels, horses, and mules, was enormous, and we rode hopelessly about in the gathering gloom, trying to find the space allotted to correspondents. After a couple of hours’ search we at length succeeded in finding our camels and getting our tents pitched, and then we did full justice to whatever sort of dinner the ingenuity of our cooks could contrive for. their hungry masters. The camp was an extremely pretty one, and in places the vegetation by the river banks was quite luxuriant. Bushes of all kinds, especially the ‘‘Dead Sea apple,” were dotted about; and as these prevented one from seeing more than a hundred yards around, it was diffi-