EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN 95 



a pitcher to get less undrinkable water from a 

 distance. Heads of hippopotami bobbed up at times 

 all about us in the mid river, but were very shy of 

 approach. At that date, I should have said there 

 were crocodiles on nearly every sandbank on the Nile 

 below the Cataracts, for considerably more than half 

 of the way thence to Cairo. 



Beyond the despondency caused by the air and 

 the mournful character of the scenery, I have little 

 to say, except that our journey upwards was concluded 

 somewhat earlier than intended, through an adventure. 

 One of my two companions, attended by Parkyns, lay 

 out at night to shoot a hippopotamus, whose recent 

 tracks were only too apparent. They returned in 

 the dark and very early morning in much excitement, 

 and tried to make us understand that we ought to 

 wake up and return at once, for some unintelligible 

 reason. However, to please them, we yielded to 

 their insistence, roused up the crew and sailed home- 

 wards. It turned out, some hours later, that the real 

 reason was that my sportsman-companion had shot, 

 not a hippopotamus, but a cow that was coming down 

 to the river to drink. There really seemed no 

 feasible way of making amends for the mistake, and 

 a certainty of clamour and excessive claims if we 

 confessed it. So we disappeared from that district, 

 much as a pestilence would have done. 



Our return journey past Khartum was by our boat 

 to Matemma, opposite to Shendy, where we dis- 

 charged it, and hired camels to take us a six days' 

 journey, I think, across the Bayouda Desert to Dongola. 

 We had become by that time used to camel-riding, 

 we were well mounted, and travelled even as much as 



