286 SERVICE AND SPORT IN THE SUDAN 



fashion of the south. My decisions were accepted 

 is all that I remember of the cases, and no appeal 

 being made, the piles of correspondence on them 

 were at last put away. 



Uniformly successful I was not. In one case I 

 forgot to prove that the goods, about which the case 

 was, had been stolen — it was so obvious to me 

 that they had been. An appeal against the decision 

 had to be upheld. In connection with this case I 

 had quite a bad quarter of an hour. I had sentenced 

 the accused to imprisonment. Next morning I was 

 riding down to the office on a donkey when I 

 was surrounded by more than a hundred women, 

 screaming and screeching and demanding the release 

 of their relative. I never thought a man could have 

 so many female relatives. 



Generally we numbered three in mess, but some- 

 times only one. I used to walk to the hills east of the 

 town. They were covered with wheelmarks left there 

 by the " New Army " when learning its trade in the 

 nineties. It is astonishing how long marks in the sand 

 last. The tracks of Gordon near the Murat wells, when 

 he deviated slightly from the road on his last journey 

 south, are said to be still to be seen. The hills were 

 covered with praying-places. A man carefully clears 

 a space six by two feet, and surrounds it with stones. 

 It is etiquette to avoid defiling it, so the pious one is 

 saved the trouble of clearing a fresh place each day. 



J. Shaitan ("the devil's mountain"), about 600 feet 

 high, was a great magnet. It lies about four miles 

 east of the river. I climbed it several times. 



