MEET TRAVELLERS FROM CAIRO. 435 
worldly effects. They had been fifty-one days coming 
by land from Cairo, and were the first Egyptian 
travellers we had met. They could not make out 
where we had come from, and asked us a number of 
strange questions. Was it true that the Governor-Gen- 
eral of the Soudan, Musa Pasha, had made prisoners 
of us ? had we been serving the Abyssinian Govern- 
ment ? were English officers fighting for the Abyssin- 
ians ? was Queen Victoria to resign in favour of the 
Prince of Wales ? were we the remnant of fifty Eng- 
lishmen who had left Zanzibar to cross Africa ? These 
interrogatories were all put to us by an Albanian 
gentleman ; the other traveller was a priest, a very in- 
telligent man. He went so far as to say, when told 
that we had come from the source of the Nile, that 
the Koran had always said that it proceeded from a 
lake; but what was the size of it? Had we seen 
cannibals ? What did we pay for these five Seedees 
and the little girls we had with us ? Having answered 
all these queries to their satisfaction, we saw them 
depart for Khartoom. In the afternoon we had a visit 
from a fortune-teller. He sat at our feet, smoothed 
with his hand the floor of sand, and asked our names, 
which we did not tell him ; however, he commenced 
to span the sand and to mark it in his own cabalistic 
way, after which he pronounced the opinion, that the 
fatigues of the long journey weighed heavily upon 
Speke's heart. 
5 th.- — Intending to start across the desert at noon, 
we had prepared for the journey by keeping our 
camels without water for two days, and we now gave 
them as much as they could drink before setting out. 
Several of them had pieces of goat-skin sewn to the 
