EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN 91 



redolent stuff that our water-skins afforded, and so 

 on for four more days, when we reached the Nile at 

 Abu Hamed, having cut across its huge bend. Oh ! 

 the delights to such tourists as we were, of a 

 temporary exemption from the discomforts of the 

 desert, and of unlimited rations of water. We 

 travelled farther by the side of the Nile for another 

 three days or so, till Berber was reached, when we 

 paid our dues and said good-bye to the camels. The 

 Governor of Berber was very civil ; the sherbet he 

 gave us, though made from limes and not from 

 lemons, tasted heavenly. He gave me a monkey, 

 and I bought another, and these two were my 

 constant companions on camel-back and everywhere 

 else for many months, until I reached England. 



A boat had here to be hired to take us up to 

 Khartum. We got one in which the part below 

 decks was much too low to stand in, and it swarmed 

 with cockroaches, but it sufficed. The people at 

 Berber were unruly, and so obstructive that the 

 boatmen feared to enter with us into their own boat. 

 However, we showed determination, and pushed off 

 into the stream, with the result that first one and then 

 another of the men ran alongside and plunged into 

 the water and swam to the boat and turned its head 

 up stream. We then set sail to Khartum. 



In due time we passed Shendy, the scene of the 

 recent massacre of Abbas Pasha, a younger son of 

 Mehemet Ali. He was sent to collect imposts and 

 to overawe the people. At Shendy he and his 

 soldiers committed all sorts of outrages, and finally 

 he demanded the daughter of the Deftader (or 

 Tax-gatherer) in a form of marriage that was 



