iqS Seven Years in the Soudan.

sented two jars of merissa and a goat, announcing that Wadelai was ill, and could not come, but that he had been charged to conduct me to him.

I was uncertain what part to take, when the messenger with whom I had spoken the day before approached ; at sight of him the old man in the red shirt divested himself of his garment, and took to flight as fast as possible. I then perceived that I had to do with a company of rogues, and resolved to revenge myself.

I summoned the sheikh of a seriba, situated about six hundred feet from the river, and ordered him to let Wadelai know that if he did not send me back my presents before the evening, and if, before the next day, the interpreter did not come, I would set fire to the seriba, and destroy as much as I could. After such a threat the Sheikh Wadelai did not long delay in making his appearance. He was a corpulent man, but in his physiognomy there was no trace Avhatever of ferocity.

Wadelai brought me, as a present, two jars of merissa (a kind of beer of the country), two goats, and some bananas. He conversed at length with us, and thus I was able to obtain information on one branch of the river, which, issuing from the Xile, takes a direction towards the north-west. This arm, it Avas said, had a width of about six hundred feet, and a depth varying from eighteen to twenty-five feet. Wadelai told me that it had a very long course, but that he could not indicate its mouth to me ; it flowed along the foot of mountains in the country of the Luris, but this people being ver}-fierce he had never been able to penetrate much beyond their boundaries. He complained then of the continual depredations on the herds, the burning of his villages, and massacre of his subjects on the part of these Luris.

' Probably one of the many channels wliich tlie Isile forms in this country.