26 THE WAR IN THE SOUDAN.

Here we come upon patches of well-tilled soil filled with the vegetable productions of the country. There may be seen on the right or left bank beautiful groves of date palms alternating with thorn trees with lovely green spray and yellow blossoms, a strong contrast With the white thorn ; and every

now and then a lawn-like expanse strikes the eye, the ground looking as if it

was rolled, so even and smooth is it—fields of barley in all stages of growth, the castor oil plant, cotton, corn and beans of various kinds, many of the latter having a beautiful purple and white flower. To the eye, tired and sun- scorched with the glare of the desert sand just left behind, it is indeed a

vision of the Elysian fields.

On the 28th, we passed an island of exceeding fertility and beauty—a very Arcadia—where one might fancy that they had found a haven of rest and peace, that the desire of their soul and their longings for the beautiful and the “ Rest for the weary ” had at last been attained, were the scene not marred with the miserable mud huts and filthy corrals of the natives, which are surrounded by such an atmosphere that any description of it would so taint the paper on which it was written that you could not get near enough

to read it.

I cannot by any description that I can give do justice to Merawi. Stretching back from the river about a quarter of a mile, the cliffs rise boldly and assume quite a castellated form. Huge blocks of white, grey and pink freestone seem to have been laid together like built masonry. But nature has done a work that man with all his ingenuity and education could only faintly imitate. The impress of the Master hand is there, stamped with the Maker’s name from everlasting to everlasting. Right from the foot of this

wall of rock to the river edge, a lawn level as you could imagine slopes gently, dotted with groups of palm and thorn and fringed as it were here and there with crops of young barley, with the odd-looking caustic plant with its broad' leaves, very like those of the cactus, interspersed, and ne irer the bank of the stream a belt of grass looking very like our Canadian foxtail, and

■close on the water edge a broad belt of the bean plant, making a most charm¬

ing scene. But delightful as all this is, it has only the effect of making me

sigh for the green fields, the forest glades and the lovely lakes of dear Canada my home.

The tribes up this way are slightly different from those below, the men are certainly better and more independent looking, better clothed also and altogether more manly.

The women wear their hair in the form of a fringe, each strand about a quarter of an inch in diameter, plaited and well greased, rings in their noses and their ears, with bracelets and anklets. As a general thing this is “ full dress for the belles of the Soudan.”