He had two mud huts and one matted tent, and cultivated ground on the opposite bank of the Nile. Among these people, the women work like the men, while the small infants are confided to the care of children six or seven years of age.

We dined that night by the roar of the fifth cataract, Shelal El Homar (cataract of the Wild Asses). This Shelal is simply a system of tortuous rapids, rushing through irregular, dangerous rocks. The following night, we slept at the postal village of the province, having made a march of fifty miles during the day. The only post by which letters are borne from the Soudan to Korosko is the dromedary post; thence the mail goes by foot-men, each one of whom runs with the bag for two hours and delivers it to his relief, and thus the system is continued to Roda, when the rail carries it to Cairo. The extraordinary sum of $7. was paid for postage upon nine letters addressed from Korosko to Cairo. The same envelope bore other letters, but not of enough weight to make much difference.

On the 27th of January we met many caravans, this time household trains.

The telegraph operator of Berber was transporting his harem across the desert. It was a novel

sight to behold the women in white veils, housed over by canvas awnings, on the back of a camel; while a portion of the train had beds arranged at the same elevation, containing mothers and their infants stowed among pillows and linen, suffering the rocking motion of the beast. We passed the night in Guineyatoo, a flourishing mud village, where the construction of the buts, like that of all Arab villages, very much resembles the cabin of the Hungarian peasant. We made a late start on the 28th of January, and rode through palm groves and tropical jungles, shooting at crocodiles and grouse from the river's bank. We rode over "the plain of the hippopotamus" leading to Berber, and halted, near two o'clock, guests of the village of the Sheik's uncle. We were treated to coffee and sherbets of sugar.

There I noted a sublime phenomenon. To northward were five equi-distant sandspouts rising perpendicularly to a great height, and losing their swelling capitals in the clouds. They seemed to stand as columns to the yault of the sky, and the supernatural architecture was further heightened by mirage lakes, whose waters seemed to dash against the pillars, as the green of doom-palms waved

through the colonade. The whole spectacle appeared like the ruin of a supernal Pantheon, once reared by the bank of the mighty river. I saw one sandspout which assumed the form of a balloon, dragging its mouth over the plain.

One hour from Berber we met Azar, the United States Consular Agent at Khartoum, who had come out to welcome us. We found him a pleasant old Copt, ready to do every thing for our comfort. He is one of the oldest and wealthiest merchants of the Soudan. Following closely upon his heels, came the Governor of Berber with thirty natives, equerries habited in white, who assisted him to dismount from his white donkey. The Governor bade us welcome, and we then started for his palace. Thousands of the villagers gazed at us with impudent curiosity, as we rode through the streets of Berber on our camels.

Arrived at the gate of the palace, 300 soldiers, uniformed in white and armed with polished mus. kets, were drawn up in open ranks at present arms. They saluted us with a roll of drums and a sounding of bugles, and we then dismounted before the door of the audience chamber, among hundreds of janissaries, pages, lackeys and minor menials.

We were assured by the Governor that we had accomplished the trip from Cairo in the shortest time ever made by white men- in thirty-one days. It was, in a word, a very bitter physical experience across the desert, and we contemplated it with joy only after it had been finished. Over four hundred miles of burning sands, through regions marked by savagery and the bones of perished travelers, had glutted our mental appetites with horrors, even if one had not been totally unstrung by 104 hours in the saddle.

NOTE.- Arabic orthography is the most arbitrary of all spelling when reduced to English sounds. The few words I have ventured to use in the native tongue are all of them susceptible to at least half a dozen forms of orthography and syllabication. "Sheyk" is also spelt "sheikh," "sheik," "sheayk," etc.; and other words, generic, geographical and technical, are equally pliable.

CHAPTER IX.

AT THE CAPITAL OF THE SLAVE TRADE.

At noon on Tuesday, the 6th of February, our Soudan dahabeah was parting the dark, rippling waters of the Blue Nile from the muddy flow of its sister confluent, the White Nile, and dashing along at ten knots an hour. By one o'clock the solitary minaret of Khartoum, lifting its whited spire above the palms and acacias, was the emblem of our journey's end as companions. Thence I was to nearly two o'clock,

proceed alone. We sped on till and the city of Khartoum, the capital and the metropolis of the Soudan, and the greatest monument to the fame of Mohamed Ali, was in full view. Situated on the left bank of the Blue Nile, Khartoum was first built in 1819 as a military post, and afterward grew to its present dimensions, stimulated by the commerce growing out of the rich harvests of gum and the gathering in of ivory. It now contains 40,000 people, and is by far the finest provincial city of Africa. Early in the morning we were boarded by a janissary of the Governor-General,