AN OBLIGING SCHOOLMASTER. 
57 
proved ineffectual^ but ten piastres (about two shillings) overcame 
the scruples of the village schoolmaster to give me a rafter from 
the roof of his liousCj that answered the purpose. Our crew and 
carpenter — for every boat proceeding down the cataracts is provided 
with one — worked with a will_, and on September 2nd_, the required 
repairs completed and our rudder shipped^ away we sped at noon_, 
and at three p.m. again joined the main stream. Another channel, 
Chor Kurgus, bordered profusely with date-palms, was shortly en- 
tered, and making fast at sunset, we spent the night on the island. 
Around its edges the date-palm throve superbly, and the fruit partly 
harvested. Numbers of dealers had already made considerable pur- 
chases. The fruit was packed in large bags made from the fibre 
of the tree that bore it, and on donkeys and camels it was to be 
conveyed southward, to supply the wants of thousands. 
A rudely-constructed ferry-boat of thick planks staunched with 
rags, was there to convey these bags to the opposite shore on the 
mainland; but the population required no such vehicle to con- 
vey them across. Both men and women inflate a goat^s skin, and 
thereon with impunity brave the swift current, that is a couple of 
hundred yards wide. Their clothes are, turban fashion, wound 
round their heads, to keep them dry. On .the shoulder of a man 
we witnessed, nestled a child, and near him swam his wife. Al- 
though both struck out well with their arms and legs, the current 
bore them down fully a quarter of a mile, and with the aid of our 
glasses we gladly witnessed them scramble up the opposite bank-. 
September Zrd . — From this to Aboo Hamed, the left bank of 
the river being the most favoured. It supports, with fruit and 
serials, the populations of a few distant villages. On the right, 
the desert by degrees encroaches on to the edge of the river, and 
