NEW-YEAR'S EVE COLD. 
147 
height of the plateau, above the level of the sea, at 
some fifteen hundred feet. 
3ist. — The last day of the year ! One year gone 
in Africa this tour ! How many more are to pass ? 
Alas ! who ean tell ? — We came to-day nine hours, 
always south, over a perfect desert-plain, mostly 
sandy. A cold north-east wind was blowing all the 
day. The people dread it as death itself; as well 
they may, for they are nearly naked. Their Soudan 
cotton clothes afford them little or no protection 
against such a bleak north-easter. Europeans are 
astonished to see these people shivering with cold in 
this bleak weather, and forget that they themselves 
are well clothed. This remark is very applicable 
to the northern coast, where hundreds of the poor 
are seen shivering, with only a thin blanket thrown 
around them in the coldest day of winter. When 
they see a European well covered with tight cloth 
clothes, and flannel underneath, they may well call 
out sega, " cold," as they often do ; and we are ready 
to laugh, and forget they are naked. 
In this part of the desert birds of prey abound. 
We passed to-day some twenty large vultures, 
feeding on a dead camel. When the caravan filed 
by they all took wing, and perched themselves in a 
row on a rising mound of sand, and there waited 
until we had passed before them, like so many 
soldiers. These were black vultures, and of enor- 
mous breadth of wing. Many wild oxen, or what 
are so called, were seen, and everywhere the foot- 
