Che Sportsman Canrist. | 
IN EL MAHDI’S LAND. 
SPORT AMONG THE PALM GROVES OF KOROSKO. 
N the effusions of the telegram fiend, who trumps of war's 
alarms, and tells us by a contradictory, method pecu- 
liarly his own, of the slow movements of the British expedi- 
tion for the relief of General Gordon, frequent mention is 
.maade of the Nubian town of Korosko, which lies at the 
northern elbow of the great Atmoor bend of the Nile, half 
way between the first and second cataracts. But as it is not 
the cowl that makes the monk, so Korosko, in its proudest 
moments, cannot claim in its own right the fame so newly 
thrust upon it, nor justify its inhabitants to imagine a yain 
thing. When it wakes from its sleepy baskings in its desert 
gorge, gratified as wel] as astonished must it he to find that 
distant eyents, and the unbidden hand of external politics, 
have chosen to write its namein capitalson the map of 
Egypt. ‘‘A poor thing, but mine own,” as Touchstone said 
of Audrey. Korosko is essentially a Nubian town. In aspect 
it is two fold. being divided into two clumps or batches of 
mud huts, situated ina wide arena of dust and sand, some 
four or tive miles in diameter, and flanked on the southern 
side by a maze of hills which shut out from the river and 
its greet prosperity the Atmoor Desert. This outer waste 
extends in barren crag and plain away to the Red Sea coast 
and Abyssinia, and through it wind those caravan roads 
which link the trade of Central Africa with Hgypt. 
The traffic thus brought to Korosko appears its only raisov 
d’éire, The entire place seems indeed created by the cara- 
vans that are constantly coming or going, and its grimy 
hovels and inhabited dust heaps owe what animation they 
have to the many caravan drivers, whose tents are pitched 
among the bales of gum, skins, ivory and merchandise which 
their rageed-looking camels haye brought across the desert 
from the Soudan. These tents are the queerestlooking 
tenements imaginable, and are of all sizes, colors and shapes, 
according to the materials possessed by the builders thereof. 
The generality are formed of palm matting and hides, sup- 
ported by poles, arranged. after the Bedaween fashion, and 
with one side partially or entirely left open to give ingress to 
persons and light. The main idea of the tent-makers appears 
ta be elongation, for, although few are oyer five feet in 
height, many reach to fifteen feet and more in length, The 
materials of their construction are oddly varied, consisting 
oft-times of the most unlooked-for things. I remember an 
instance where the occupier of a more than usually rambling 
domicile had somehow become possessed of a set of iron 
railings, of the sort that appear round, the small gardens of 
city suburbs. These he had carefully worked into the erec- 
fion of his temporary abode, like some magpie with a 
treasure trove, placing them with evident pride in the most 
conspicuous positions; and such iron-mongery must have 
had strange adventures before it was used to ornament the 
matting and the skin-decked home of 4 caravan merchant. 
But these tents contrast happily with the mud and palm log 
huts among which they are scattered, and jend a wild pic- 
turesqueness to, the Nubian town, lying baking in its natural 
oven of dust and sand, in the midst of an amphitheater of 
naked, glowing bills, and fronted by the palm groves and 
fields of the river, 
One April morning, sometime before El Mahdi had quitted 
his fakir’s cave to become a Soudanese leader, I left my 
moorings by Korosko’s bank, and hoisting tne cumbrous 
sails of my dahabeeah, started southward, amid a wail 
of “‘backsheesh” from the collected crowd of natives and 
the workers of a sakir whose drowsy creaking had sung 
a melancholy lullaby throughout the dreamy night. Beyond 
the town the stream takes so many devious twists and turns 
that an ascending dahabeeah has as much labor to get up 
them as an ant would have in climbing a corkscrew, and 
most grievous and sore were our labors to reach a locality 
where the god Nilus retakes on himself a behavior more 
ataid and befitting his dignity, As I had, however, no wish 
to submit to the ennui that comes of watching a dehabeeah 
slowly working up against the current under the induce- 
ments of tracking, warping, punting and all the ills that 
these primitive crafts are heirs to, I resolved to take a ramble 
ashore and see what game could be found in the thick palm 
sroves which border these tortuous but beautiful reaches 
of the Nile. Taking with me my favorite sailor, a Syrian, 
named Rachidi, whose giant stature had earned for him 
among his comrades the soubriquet of “‘the buffalo,” I 
landed on the eastern bank and commenced my wanderings 
in these groves which, thicker and denser than any in 
Egypt or Northern Nubia, extend in an unbroken line of 
foliage from Korosko to beyond the town of Derr. Mar- 
shalled in grove after grove, with breaks so rare that the 
entering sunlight seryed only to make the green shadows 
more intense, a lovely sight was this deep and seemingly 
endless forest of palms, skirting the eastern shore in weleoame 
contrast to the monotonous sandhills of the opposite Lybian 
desert, Along the river’s edge played incessantly the many 
sakirs, the sound of whose ungreased and moaning 
wheels gladden the Nubian’s heart as they turn from 
the revolving pitchers a constant stream of water into the 
channels of the small and precious fields. The plaintive ex- 
postulations of these sakirs were the only disturbing sounds 
of the shadow-land roofed by the feathered leaves of count- 
less palms and peopled by a bewildering maze of fitful lights 
and shades which danced among the bending stems. In some 
places the trees were so thickly planted that to find a straight 
path among their tangled glades was impossible, and when- 
ever the foot broke some twig or disturbed some stone, the 
palm doves perched in the spreading leaves above would 
flutter off al the sound with sudden rustle, like spirits of the 
dim past whose rest had been broken in the gloom of their 
leaf-arched home, These birds are very plentiful in all the 
palm groves of Egypt, and to the sportsman weary of quail 
or tiver shooting, or he who cherishes his gun’s company 
when on a ramble, afford excellent marks in their quick 
flight among the palms for preventing the right hand from 
forgetting its cunning. They are fawn-colored, with won- 
drous glossy necks, and to the voyageur tired of his drago- 
man’s bill of fare are as quail after manna. Perhaps the 
ideal and the practical are in rather close adjunct in that 
sentence, but did not Buffon, in his delightfully nonchalant 
“way, remark that ‘‘the nightingale is a most marvelous song. 
ster and also excellent on buttered toast.” The principal 
difficulty to overcome, however, before cooking these serial 
hares is to catch or rather descry them. So exactly do they 
resemble the palm stems to which they cling, and which 
natural shelter they are by instinct adverse to leave, that a 
pair of Mr. Sam Weller’s double magnifying eyes which 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
lating gold from crushed ore. 
habitants of the thick and shadowy palm-tops. A most 
bright and active leash of retrievers they proved themselves, 
albeit a little wild and inclined to ‘‘range.” 
_ With their aid and that of the mighty Rachidi—a host of 
vigilance in himself—these self-appointed gillies were soon 
laden with a supply of these innocent, but delectable birds. 
Passing on throngh many glades, we next reached some open 
efound, where free space and light had given encourage- 
ment tothe growth of afew palms which towered above 
their confined and denser neighbors like arboreal giants 
crowned with panoplies of green, Surrounding and inter- 
spersed among these palms were fields of doura checkered 
into innumerable squares by shadoot ciiannels, whose rillets 
soaking through the thirsty soil turned it from gray to a rich 
red that contrasted well with the green of the young crop, 
and the shadows of the tall lbreemee. Here and there were 
clustered together groups of palms bending their graceful 
trunks in varions curves to reach the coyeted light, or stand- 
ing in twos and threes, gossipiny. among themselves as the 
breeze, blowing over the waving fields, shook their leaves 
into Janguage. Birds of all kinds and plumage twittered on 
the palm-tops, and filled the sky with life, while the merops 
or bee-eater, with its quick flight seeming to leave a trail of 
sparkles in the sunshine, fluttered in flashes of green and 
bronze over its sunlit play ground, As I picked my way 
along these sakir and shadoof rills, quail, singly and in 
flights, rose every now and then from their miniature forests 
of doura, too often paying dearly for their lack of discretion. 
Wheneyer a victim fell my ever ready Nubian babies re- 
trieved it with shouts of joy that not only set the wild echoes 
flying, but likewise other quail whose nerves were, with 
reason, disorganized by the clamor. So plentiful were these 
birds that, hardly heeding my straying steps, I sought them 
further and further afield until at Jast I found myself on the 
brink of the desert, whose envious sands lapped up in a clear 
defined line against the borders of the fertile Jand like the 
tide’s ripple on the shore. Nothing was there here for me. 
Eyen such feeble folk as the conies who make their dwell- 
ings among the rocks, make them not in such desolate places, 
and the few yultures—those emblems of sultriness—that 
were about, sat lazily on the rocks that peeped from out 
their enyeloping ocean of sand, like miniature islands, star- 
ing dazed and yacantly at the lifeless glow around, or ‘‘wing- 
ing the midway air” in sullen, pirposeless flight. I had 
some desire to possess the wing feathers of one of these 
giant ‘‘Pharaoh’s chickens,” and so as one of these birds of 
evil omen with heavy movement quitted the boulder whereon 
he doubtless had been dreaming of a goodly line of sun- 
bleached bones whitening in some desert gorge telling the 
route of Arab caravans, and came sailing on ragged pinions 
within range, I fired, and down came the ungainly sanitary 
commissioner of the East. But I repented me of the unnec- 
essary breaking of Buddha’s law a moment after, for on ap- 
proaching my victim he smelf so atrociously that it was im- 
possible to take or even touch him—as Hamlet said of Alex- 
ander’s skull: *“Think you he smelt:so, pah, my gorge rose 
at it.” C 
So fervid was the air of the desert lying parched and 
glaring under the fierce noonday sun, I was glad to strike 
back into my palm-grove glades, and after wandering among 
their shades a while, to follow the creaking of a distant sakir, 
which sent its suggestive echoes through the trees. By its 
guidance I finally found myself once more on the river’s 
bank, where a patient toiling buffalo was droningits useful 
life away at the stiff and groaning wheel, and being driven 
by a little naked baby, who at my approach sprang from 
its seat on the turning bar to lisp the familiar and ever-ready 
demand: ‘‘Back-seesh-ya-Howaga.”’ These sakirs are often 
of great size and very picturesque, asthe circle of dripping 
earthenware pots revolying on the partially sunk wheel lift to 
the surface of the field the precious water which the chan- 
nels take and redistribute. ‘The circle of jars is worked by 
two or three cogged wheels, generally under the rude cover- 
ing of 4 shed made of mud walls, roofed with palm leaves, 
which afford shelter to the dejected, lean kine that forever 
turns the cumbrous contrivance, and to the little driving 
boy who sits in a net slung to the horizontal bar which the 
buffalo drags round in the narrow space between wall and 
wheel. Once I entered incautiously one of these sakir 
sheds, and a moment afterward the animal had passed the 
doorway aud was coming slowly upon me, without leaving 
the option of my getting by him on either side or round to 
the place I had entered by in time to escape the imnouinent 
peril of being squeezed or trampled on, Fortune, however, 
was good enough to provide a third course, and as he came 
up to me I put one hand on his neck and a foot on the hori- 
zontal bar and jumped to his back, whereon I rode trium- 
phantly until we reached the doorway, through which I 
promptly jumped, but alas with more haste than discretion, 
for 1 settled most unhappily in the thorny arms of an acacia. 
bush. 
Leaying my lisping claimant ot the sakir to his infantile 
meditations fancy free, an adventurous duck rising from a 
mud sully went next to swell my bag, and soon afterward a 
lizard hawk, which I coveted as a specimen, flew over my 
path and thereupon vitam sub nube religuit, falling into some 
standing doura. Thence it was retrieved by the strangest 
clad individual [think I ever saw. Hewas a Nubian, so 
black that he might haye been carved out of ebony, and his 
dress consisted of a very ancient fez, from which the glory 
of its original crimson had long since departed, and only 
the mere fhost of its tassel remained, a thick walking stick, 
and a gorgeous green waistcoat which he had thought unne- 
cessary to fasten, perhaps that he might the better display 
its brass buttons and grandeur to an envious world, From 
what strange source he could haye become possessed of this 
latter item of his wardrobe is a riddle wot to be found and 
made a note of eyen in the pages of a Sartor Resartus, 
Needless to say he demanded backsheesh, and I never paid the 
tribute more willingly to any of Egypt's many askers than 
to the light-hearted owner of this grotesque costume. 
As 1 was now nearing the town of Derr, and the sun was 
seeking fresh lands to roast behind the yellow Lybian hills, 
I deemed it well to return to my dahabeeah, which lay 
moored to the opposite shore under the shelter of a group of 
sont trees. Accordingly, I asked this gaily-attired gentleman 
to assist Rachidi neds the full chorus of accompanying 
could see up two flights of stairs, round a corner and through 
a door are needed for their successful finding. Asa rule I 
found it expedient to purchase the services of a native lad 
for this especial purpose, their talents at this kind of work 
being extraordinary, and their powers of distinguishing dove 
from palm-stem only equaled by that of mercury in assimi- 
On this oceasion I soon had 
a goodly company of brown toddling babies, wearing: naught 
but smiles, althongh an infinitude of that light material, and 
ardent was their devotion to discovering and dislodging the 
urchins in hailing the felucea to take me back. The result 
was alarmingly powerful and energetic, but even the Sultan 
of Turkey, who, report says, is partial to the tuning up of a 
fiddle, could not call it melodious. However, it was sue- 
-cessful, and while the boat was coming for me in answer to 
this wild Nubian co-yell, I became the center of quite a 
little market et eal upon the banks of the Derr, whereat 
I was appointed to the dignity of buyer and general butt for 
a score of generous, if undesirable offers. One young say- 
age brought me a chameleon, which, probably at the insult 
of being made a subject of barter and sale, changed its color 
from a bilious yellow to a sort of wsthetic green, and back 
again as rapidly; but, as they are difficult to feed (sunlight is 
the diet prescribed by poets and flies by materialists—both 
difficult to catch) and seldom live long in captivity, I de- 
clined becoming a purchaser of the cold, writhing, claw and 
tail grasping reptile. Another Derrite, seeing his friend’s 
mercantile venture a failure, asked me in a winning manner 
it I wanted a scorpion, a specimen of which he had caught 
and now cautiously held by two fingers while the angry 
creature jerked viciously its venomous tail. Tvresisted this 
temptation also, giving the boy some backsheesh, but beg- 
ging myself off from coming to any further bargain on the 
maatter. 
Yet another was desirous of disposing to me of a chicken 
—a revived mummied one, to judge by ils appearance— 
which he carried upside down by one leg, and a group of 
juvenile savages brought mea couple of small birds which 
they carried by a yet more novel method, namely, swinging 
them round their heads at the ends of palm-fiber string. 
Not understanding the flutterings of the victims, which at 
first 1 supposed to be either dead or tamed, I asked to see 
their tiny prisoners. ‘These they handed me with a delight- 
ful air of pride and innocence, when I found that the little 
wretches had threaded a thin reed through their nostrils, and, 
attaching to it a piece of fiber ‘string, thus made sport of 
their misery by swinging the poor things about, which, un- 
able to escape, were forced to use their wings to alleviate the 
pain, Purchasing the unhappy creatures, I released them 
from their cruel fastenings, and, giving them their liberty, 
they were soon lost among the foliage of the distant trees, 
Hapless, indeed, would they be if again they fell into the 
clutches of their Nubian tormentors. I inquired of the boys 
why they indulged in such wantonly brutal play, but only 
received the startling retort, ‘Why does the Howaga shoot 
them, then?” TI tried to explain, somewhat lamely I was 
conscious, that, although I certainly had shot the birds 
Rachidi was carrying, there was considerable difference be- 
tween inflicting instantaneous death for a proper purpose 
and prolonged and useless pain. But I am afraid that my 
reasoning was not particularly effective, The small Nubians 
‘would have their will,” and saw no practical difference 
between shooting and maiming unfortunate little birds, the 
former of which they considered, if anything, rather the 
worse. 
My argument seemed so very illogical, not only to all my 
gathered assembly but to myself, that 1 was not sorry to take 
advantage of my arrived felucea and seek the confusion of 
my opponents in flight. So amid a mighty wail of ‘‘back- 
sheesh ya Howaga,” I took the tiller in hand and started the 
boatman into a song—without which mecentive to an even 
stroke Nubians row in asoul-anguishing manner, Whether 
it was this most untuneful ditty, or the chorus of clamoring 
natives, or the discord of both ] know not, but as we shot 
out from the bank a great splash on the water some way 
further down called my attention to the disappearing form of” 
a large saurian whose lazy evening siesta had been disturbed 
by our fco near approach, Of course the rowers promptly 
dubbed it a crocodile, but, though it plunged into the river 
so quickly that I had barely time to glean more than a yague 
impression that its color was a bright green and its head and 
body as ungraceful and uncanny as well might be, it was 
clearly not even a youthful crocodile. Avab jokers are fre- 
quently trying to palm off on the too-eager traveler a distant 
floating log or sand bar as one of these much-talked-of 
creatures; but the modern tourist in Egypt will be very 
fortunate if he sees a single specimen north of the first 
cataracts, There is a legend connected with the tomb of & 
saint at Minnich in Middle Egypt to the effect that the kindly 
spirit: of the departed Muslini, besides guarding his adopted 
town and deyotees, keeps ward agaiust any crocodile passin. 
his revered tomb. Should one, however, dare adventure an 
try to steal down, the idea is that he inevitably comes to 
grief and floats a corpse on the river to the sea. Apartfrom 
this sheyhh’s duty it is more thay probable that were any 
crocodile so idiotic as to come within 4 buandred miles of the 
place it would stand but a poor chanee for ifs life. Rare is 
it, though still occurring, that the “‘timsah’’ is seen in Middle 
Egypt, having of late been converted into traveling bags and 
cigar cases much too rapidly for the liking of any modest 
saurian despising the empty benefits of fame. Hashions, 
rifles, and patent eartridges yearly drive them further and 
further south, and the once classical crocodile, whose death 
in happier times invoked religious pareantries and rites of 
sumptuous embalming, now seeks to hide from the gaze of a 
sacrilecious world that has forgotten to worship “‘Sanah,” 
the god of darkness of the ancient Hgyptians. other than as 
“an allegory of the Nile.” J. BL A 
DrKTEcH, Scotland, 
FLORIDA AGAIN,--VII. 
| Wagnoe Punta Rassa and following the coast line for 
three miles, Matanzas Pass will be entered and Hst ero 
Bay opened up. This extensive body of water is well sup- 
plied with fish of various kinds and of large size, A friend 
who spent two winters in this pea was loud in its praise. 
In one of his letters published in a Northern paper, he stated 
‘that he had read of a lake in Michigan that would contain 
one more fish; but there was not room for another in Estero 
Bay.” In this bay, sawtish, shark and tarpon feed on the 
toothsome mullet, and with this bait they can be captured. 
The general character of the fishing and shooting is similar 
to that of Charlotte Harbor. The sportsmen will be amply 
tepaid for ascending Corkscrew River, a tributary of this 
bay. In this stream the rodster will find cayallii, ravallia 
and tarpon in great numbers. Leaving the stream the gun 
ner will find deer and turkey Phere lives (or did live) a 
stettler on Mound Key, and as he is perfectly familiar with 
the best fishing points, he might be hired, and would be 
found useful to point out the resorts of particular species of 
Leaving Estero Bay at its most southerly pass, an outside 
sail of eleven miles will bring the sportsman in sight of Gor- 
don’s Pass. Keeping to the left side of the channel and fol- 
lowing it for half a mile it will be found to enter a long 
lagoon. When | last visited this region, deer and bear were 
plentiful, but I have been informed that several parties have 
