ron of Egyptian horse, fell in with a small body of Baggara under
Sheikh Yunis, and had a brush with them, one or two being wounded on
either side. The Sirdar and headquarters embarked at 9 a.m., 27th
August, on the gunboat "Fatah," to steam through Shabluka. I left Wad
Hamid the same day with one servant, rode through to El Hejir, 22
miles, and arrived in the afternoon, having ridden out of my way to
see the narrower gorges of the Cataract. The spaciousness of the
previous camp was conspicuously absent at El Hejir. In rather thick
bush and on partly overflowed alluvial ground, the lines were drawn
closely together. As the river kept rising, it soon became difficult,
without making a considerable detour, to pass from one part to another
of the ground by the water's margin.

CHAPTER VIII.

EL HEJIR TO UM TERIF--INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS.

Your Arab is picturesque but poisonous: a fine specimen of a man,
though his usefulness in the economy of things is not apparent, at
least upon the surface. He dislikes steady, hard work, is a dreamer
with a deeply religious tinge, but all the same cruel and remorseless
in the pursuit of any object. We were well into the region that he had
ruled and ruined: a country capable of easily producing wealth,
charred and laid waste. The indigenous negro, on the other hand, is
not averse to toil,--nay, generally delights in it under normal
conditions,--is simple in his tastes, true in his conduct according to
his lights, and readily turned to better things. Your Arab seems to be
the reverse of all that, and yet he is a delightful person in his way,
though a belated savage. Burned villages, blackened hearths,
destruction on every hand, these were the telltale evidences before
our eyes of what the Khalifa and his hordes had achieved. Behind all
that there were the ruins of a great and long departed civilisation
that the early flood of Arab invasion doubtless did something to
destroy. Once again, as in the Atbara campaign, was the army closely
followed by bands of the faithful wives of the black soldiers. These
women as aforetime pitched their camp ordinarily half a mile or so in
rear of the men's, choosing broken ground and thick bush through which
they could escape if attacked by dervish raiders. In rude huts and
shelters built with their own hands amid the thorny mimosa and dhoum
palms, they washed, ground corn, made bread, cooked food, patched and
mended, and waited upon their uxoriou