DEATH A'ND BUEIAL. 
161 
The soldiers and most of the sailors assembled : they followed the 
corpse, and, clothed in new calico, it was borne on an angerih to the 
grave. The mourners walked on rapidly, chanting a wild dirge. 
Prayers were offered np when the body was consigned to the earth. 
Crude bricks were made of the clay surrounding, and the small 
chamber being walled up, the soil was then thrown in and a high 
mound raised, the mourners singing all the time in praise of their 
dead comrade. Petherick was present at the ceremony, though 
generally a prejudice exists against the presence of an unbeliever : 
they dread the evil eye. Once at Old Cairo we were on donkeys 
passing through a crowded narrow street, when a funeral procession 
at full speed approached us. One of the hired mourners, a woman 
tall and gaunt, rushed towards me, holding up her hands to my 
face, to intercept my looking at the shrouded corpse then passing. 
My donkey, frightened, backed into the shop of a Mussulman, who, 
seated cross-legged on a divan, removed his pipe from his lips to 
utter curses both loud and deep against the intruders. 
At noon the four boats got off ; the donkeys and horses were sent 
on overland to the Port, as it is called, of the Gaba Shambyl, 
distant two or three hours^ journey. A German, Herr B , has 
an important station at that place : he is an ivory trader. Though 
the wind was favourable, the boats did not reach the Gaba Shambyl 
♦ 
until live p.m., as the river took such great windings. The last four 
miles we were towed in the round -robin fashion. As we approached 
the station, we saw that two boats were there, belonging to Herr 
B , from which the Austrian flags were floating. The encamp- 
ment was on the west shore ; groups of trees redeemed the flat land 
from its otherwise monotonous appearance. The enclosure, or 
zariba, was a large one, surrounded by a thick fence of brambles, 
open only towards the river ; in t];Lis were the tookuls, some twenty- 
11 
