302 LIFE WITH THE HAMRAN ARABS. 



Kassala ; but all is bustle and confusion in our courtyard, 

 for the new men could not be collected until the evening, 

 and they are now busily arranging and cording up our 

 goods by candle-light, to enable them to load their 

 camels rapidly in the morning. The delay to-day was 

 owing to some hitch in the payment of their wages for 

 the last journey. We would have been only too glad to 

 keep our own men, but the Hamran Arabs cannot safely 

 travel through the Hadendowa country, and we are com- 

 pelled therefore to return to the latter troublesome tribe. 

 The new camels are the most miserable creatures we 

 have yet seen, and look as if half of them would die in 

 the desert. Coke, Gumming, and Arkwright give a 

 most satisfactory report of their visit to the junction of 

 a stream with the Settite, named Hor Mehetepe, about 

 four hours' journey beyond their last encampment near 

 us, and five elephants, three rhinoceros, two giraffes, and 

 one lion were numbered amongst the killed. Arkwright 

 one night knocked over two elephants with a right-and- 

 left, and they laid on the ground near him for an hour 

 trumpeting ; but the place was so dark that he could not 

 venture to approach them until morning, when he found 

 one dead and the other decamped. He killed also on 

 that night a giraffe. Another day he fired three shots 

 at an elephant, which then turned upon him and made 

 him escape for his life ; afterwards, when riding home 

 without any ammunition, he found himself amongst 



