SKETCHES IN THE SOUDAN 37 



I had been asleep some little time when a man awoke me, 

 who guided my hand, for it was very dark in the hut, into a 

 vessel filled with bread boiled in fat but now cold, It was by 

 no means an appetising dish, but, thanks to the darkness, the 

 bringer was well satisfied with my apparent appetite, and having 

 retired soon returned with a large gourd of delicious sour milk, 

 to which I did ample justice. The remainder of the night passed 

 undisturbed, except by the howling of the numerous village curs, 

 aroused by some prowling hyena, jackal, or even lion. In the 

 morning I was awake early, before any of the men lying on mats 

 outside my hut had unrolled themselves from their white cotton 

 sheets. These houseless and homeless individuals were probably 

 bachelors, for the married men all had huts, and occupied them 

 with their wives. The latter, who are almost invisible, make 

 the mats of which the huts are constructed, plaiting them of 

 dome-palm leaf strips. They are busily employed at this work 

 almost all day long, and large quantities of matting are sent 

 from these villages to other parts of the country where the dome- 

 palm is unknown, or to the coast, where it is used for packing 

 grain and other merchandise for export. The village is now, 

 however, awake ; the men are squatting here and there per- 

 forming their ablutions, and busily employed polishing their 

 brilliantly white teeth with the Arab's tooth-brush, a thin stick 

 cut, a span long, from a particular bush which grows plentifully 

 about. The stick by use soon unravels and becomes fibrous, 

 almost brushlike, at the end. Then follows the morning wor- 

 ship, similar in every way to that in the evening, and coffee in 

 the usual tiny cups. Thus refreshed, the sheikh and I started 

 on our camels to search for the absent caravan, which we soon 

 met on its way to the village. 



A place for our camp was now chosen among the palms on the 

 opposite bank, and soon everything arranged for a stay of three 

 or four days, during which we hoped to engage hunters and get 

 everything ready for our shooting trip towards the Abyssinian 

 frontier. Of course, before our camp was in anything like 

 order, men from the village, led by their sheikh, appeared, and 

 settled themselves down for the day, with the fixed purpose 

 of examining everything we had, and begging everything they 

 saw. This went on during the whole of our stay, or rather their 

 stay, for the village left before we did in search of fresh pastures 



