158 
KILGRI3 AND KAILOUEES. 
The inhabitants of Gumrek have much cattle. 
We ourselves saw some five or six hundred head, 
and they must have more than double this number, 
besides flocks and horses. The men mostly ride 
horses, but their breed is miserably small and ill - 
looking. People in poor circumstances mount bul- 
locks, as do all the women. 
To the west, lately, there came off a great razzia. 
All this country around, for some hundred miles, is 
the noted theatre of such expeditions, which are 
mostly undertaken against the salt and other cara- 
vans, where there is considerable booty expected. 
The smaller caravans escape. When the Kilgris 
and Kailouees are in open hostility, they generally 
make this the theatre of their battles; the former 
carrying off the salt of the latter. This hostility is, 
like that of most of the wild tribes, of ancient date. 
The Kilgris have been driven from all this part of 
Asben by the Kailouees. The houses we passed in 
ruins are said to have been once occupied by the 
Kilgris. If so, they evidently were in former times 
powerful and opulent, and have since become relaxed 
and pusillanimous. At any rate, they have been 
expelled by the fiercer and more ferocious Kailouees. 
The Oulimad also come here to plunder occasionally. 
At Gumrek we saw a phenomenon which, after so 
much desert, gladdened indeed our eyes. This was 
a fine sheet of water, of great extent, covered with a 
forest of luxurious trees. It was a genuine Soudan 
picture, and we gazed at it with delight. I never- 
