SKETCHES IN THE SOUDAN 41 



shields hanging from them, while their owners were per- 

 forming their ablutions or their devotions, and their comrades 

 were busy keeping the mud tanks filled to the never-ceasing 

 vocal accompaniment. Herds of kids and lambs were always 

 kept separate, generally under the command of boys. All day 

 long unceasingly they came and went, and it is no wonder that 

 these villages have very frequently to be shifted, for everything 

 green within possible reach of the wells must very rapidly be 

 devoured by so many hungry mouths. The shepherd never 

 leaves his flock, and lives entirely on the milk and a little native 

 corn. With their primitive hatchets they cut down any branches 

 out of reach of their charges, and at night they drive these into 

 a thorn fence enclosure to protect them from wild beasts, fre- 

 quently lighting fires around as an additional precautionary 

 measure. 



The milk is sent into the villages, made into butter by means 

 of constant shaking in a (leathern) girba, and then sent in 

 skins to the coast, whence it is exported in large quantities to 

 Arabia. We sometimes were presented with gourds of sour 

 milk, and, though at first a little afraid of it, soon liked it so 

 much that we never could get enough. It is simply curdled, 

 very refreshing and nutritious, of course, and agrees excellently 

 well with the stomach, indeed far better than fresh milk, which, 

 undergoing the curdling process after being swallowed, is almost 

 certain to bring on a severe fit of indigestion, which the sour 

 never does. This, excepting one lean goat, was the only present 

 we ever received from the sheiks, and that not generally without 

 the strongest hints, and sometimes only on payment even ; with 

 thousands and thousands of cattle the difficulty of obtaining milk 

 was not easy to understand. The villagers complained greatly 

 of the number of their beasts slain by lions, and no doubt with 

 reason, for they were there in the jungles. One would therefore 

 naturally expect to find the men only too glad to assist those 

 who were so anxious to relieve them of some or all of these 

 robbers, and that they would do everything in their power to 

 beat the brushwood, as Indians certainly would have done, to 

 get the lions out ; but no, they had not the energy. " In- 

 shallah ! if the cattle were to be killed they would be ; what 

 would be the use, therefore, of troubling oneself about it?" 

 The offer of backsheesh would, perhaps, tempt one man to 



