122 Deserts 



not a blade of even withered grass is to be seen ; trees 

 and bushes have shed their leaves — their very bark is 

 cracked by the fierce heat. The Atbara — that mighty 

 tributary of the Nile, to which its yearly inundations 

 are due — has altogether ceased to floW, and is con- 

 verted into a barren waste of glaring sand, four or five 

 hundred yards wide, interspersed with a few pools 

 here and there. And yet the tremendous torrents 

 which pour down into it from the Abyssinian highlands 

 have never ceased to flow ; but the whole of their 

 waters, to the last drop, have been evaporated on the 

 way by the intense heat, or have been absorbed by the 

 desert-sand which has accumulated in the bed of the 

 river. Everything is parched, scorched, gasping; not 

 only the sand, but the air is burning. 



Such is the state of things towards the end of June : 

 the Atbara is dead ! 



Then one night, when everything is suffocating, 

 there comes, suddenly, without warning of any kind, 

 a sound as of distant thunder, a continuous roll and 

 roar, which means that the river has arrived ! 



There, where there was only sand the day before, it 

 flows five hundred yards wide, a mighty flood, and 

 already fifteen to twenty feet deep ; for the rain is 

 pouring down upon the great table-land of Abyssinia, 

 and it will continue to pour for two or three months 

 ■to come. 



And the change in all the bare and withered trees 

 and shrubs, how rapid and how marvellous it is ! In 

 two days' time they show signs of bursting into leaf, 

 having previously looked as dead as they do with us 

 in winter ; and as for the mimosas — their light, 

 feathery foliage is already beginning to afford shade. 



