FROM CAIRO TO THE ATBARA 19

heard from another lady of a wonderful medium, whom she had asked to call that evening. After a short time the medium in question, an extremely old woman of the very poorest class, arrived, and the Minister laughingly promised his wife to test the genuineness of the visitor's gifts. When admitted to his presence the old creature almost immediately fell down in a kind of

fit, and to his amazement he heard pro- ceeding from her lips in strange tones, quite unlike her normal voice, the very words spoken to himself two hours before by the

Khedive under pledge of the most stringent secrecy !

Shortly before leaving Cairo my cook Ali appeared before me with a huge two-handed

Dervish sword, which he had purchased out of his own money for twenty piastres. The creature had already the day before begged me

to buy him a rifle for defensive purposes, as I was quite unable to eradicate from his mind

the belief that his kitchen utensils and himself might at any moment during the next six weeks be exposed to an attack from a frenzied

rush of Dervishes, I could not see my way to