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. 



