CHAP. I.] 
MISERY OF SCENE. 
37 
(pancakes) into it with their fingers. Meanwhile Saat 
sits among his invited guests, and works away with 
his spoon like a sageer (water-wheel), and gets an 
unwarrantable start, the soup disappearing like water 
in the desert. A dead calm the greater portion of the 
day; the river fringed with mimosa forest. These 
trees are the Soont (Acacia Arabica) which produce an 
excellent tannin : the fruit, “ garra,” is used for that 
purpose, and produces a rich brown dye: all my clothes 
and the uniforms of my men I dyed at Khartoum with 
this “ garra." The trees are about eighteen inches in 
diameter and thirty-five feet high; being in full foliage, 
their appearance from a distance is good, but on a 
closer approach the forest proves to be a desolate 
swamp, completely overflowed ; a mass of fallen dead 
trees protruding from the stagnant waters, a solitary 
crane perched here and there upon the rotten boughs; 
floating water-plants massed together, and forming 
green swimming islands, hitched generally among the 
sunken trunks and branches; sometimes slowly de¬ 
scending with the sluggish stream, bearing, spectre-like, 
storks thus voyaging on nature’s rafts from lands 
unknown. It is a fever-stricken wilderness—the current 
not exceeding a quarter of a mile per hour:—-the water 
coloured like an English horse-pond; a heaven for 
mosquitoes and a damp hell for man ; fortunately, 
