THE RED SEA HILLS 349 



thorns. Here also the aforesaid "British warbler" was 

 ubiquitous ; but one also saw creatures never seen at 

 home strange frilled lizards dart about the rocks, other 

 lizards in gaudy array of orange, blue, and white ; and 

 there were jerbilles, rock-chats, pipits, and wheatears, all 

 of desert types. Along the barren slopes above, quested 

 tawny and serpent-eagles ; and higher still, around mist- 

 wreathed peaks, circled larger eagles imperial eagles, that 

 kept the timid gazelles amove. From among gaunt boulders 

 issues a harsh call-note is it a hyrax ? No ; that note 

 comes from a pair of rock-partridge (Ammoperdix] 

 sprinting up the steep slopes beyond ; next a patch of 

 low scrub holds a brace of Salt's dikdik, and from a 

 rugged ravine jumps a great striped hyena a wild 

 country, but the gateway to regions wilder still. 



SARROWIT 



After a fortnight's bird-collecting at Sinkat, we set 

 out by camelry through the rock-defiles that lead to 

 Erkowit the Simla of Sudan 40 miles away to the 

 south-eastward. Midway, however, the fascination of a 

 lonely highland plateau induced us to encamp thereat. 

 This Eden of ours, known as Sarrowit, lies 3404 feet 

 above sea-level, entirely inset amidst hills of weird and 

 fantastic skylines. Within this circlet lay rolling stretches 

 of a stony conglomerate hornblende and porphyry, black 

 and lustrous embedded as by some Titanic roller, but 

 barren of plant-life save sparse tufts and patches of a 

 silver-bearded grass that fluttered in the breeze the 

 "tabbes-grass," I imagine, of Schweinfurth (Hordeum}. 



These petrified downs were traversed by "khors"- 

 meaning, in this case, broad shallow depressions whose 

 sandy beds were often irradiated with a wealth of colour, 

 in striking contrast to* their bleak environment. Amidst 

 a nucleus of low thorny scrub, grew dwarf cacti and 

 flowering aloes, sansevieria, and euphorbia the whole 



