23O EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

with difficulty. They seemed to understand thoroughly that it was no mere afternoon ride upon which they were bound, and made their protests accordingly. This they did by sitting down every few yards and remaining on the ground until flogged up again. " A camel is alway in a state of extreme mental depression.

He whines and groans incessantly, and never, apparently, like other animals, makes friends with his master. He trots along all day with an air of hopeless misery which nothing seems to alleviate. Only the courbash has any effect upon him. The courbash is as necessary an accessory to comfortable camel-riding as, according to Ismail Pasha, it was to successful government in Egypt. The hide of the Nile hippopotamus tanned and oiled and cut into long strips forms a whip that, as elastic as gutta percha, is yet much harder than that material; and it twines round the body of its victim with electric effect. Probably there is no more excruciating pain than the cut of a courbash, and it switches through the air with a ping like a rifle-bullet — a sound by itself generally sufficient to induce the most obstinate camel or fellah promptly to obey orders."

By the margin of the desert they rode where it encroaches on the strip of cultivated land that follows the Nile from its source almost to the sea. Overhead the sun glared fiercely, and on every side a misty mirage distorted the horizon. From the first moment of starting until the end of the day's march the four camels stretched out in front their long necks, peering anxiously for the halting-place, and groaning with disappointment as each clump of palm-trees was passed, and they still pushed on. For the night they stopped at a small hamlet of half a dozen huts, the inhabitants of which brought, by way of hospitality, a chicken in the last stages of starvation, some dates, an egg or two, and a gourd of milk. They had forgotten to bring cooking utensils, so they had to make a meal of cold "bully" beef and the eggs, with some tea brewed in the empty meat tin, and so went to sleep side by side with their camels, with a new moon overhead, by the dim light of which the villagers sat round curiously watching them in their bivouac. Not far off was the usual village water irrigating wheel, which, during high Nile period, relays of bullocks turn night and day. A sound not