THE RED SEA HILLS 
349 
thorns. Here also the aforesaid “British warbler” was 
ubiquitous ; but one also saw creatures never seen at 
home-—strange frilled lizards dart about the rocks, other 
lizards in gaudy array of orange, blue, and white; and 
there were jerbilles, rock-chats, pipits, and wheatears, all 
of desert types. Along the barren slopes above, quested 
tawny and serpent-eagles ; and higher still, around mist- 
wreathed peaks, circled larger eagles—imperial eagles, that 
kept the timid gazelles amove. From among gaunt boulders 
issues a harsh call-note—is it a hyrax? No; that note 
comes from a pair of rock-partridge {Ammoperdix) 
sprinting up the steep slopes beyond; next a patch of 
low scrub holds a brace of Salt’s dikdik, and from a 
rugged ravine jumps a great striped hyena-—a wild 
country, but the gateway to regions wilder still. 
Sarrowit 
After a fortnight’s bird-collecting at Sinkat, we set 
out by camelry through the rock-defiles that lead to 
Erkowit—the Simla of Sudan—40 miles away to the 
south-eastward. Midway, however, the fascination of a 
lonely highland plateau induced us to encamp thereat. 
This Eden of ours, known as Sarrowit, lies 3404 feet 
above sea-level, entirely inset amidst hills of weird and 
fantastic skylines. Within this circlet lay rolling stretches 
of a stony conglomerate—hornblende and porphyry, black 
and lustrous—embedded as by some Titanic roller, but 
barren of plant-life save sparse tufts and patches of a 
silver-bearded grass that fluttered in the breeze—-the 
“ tabbes-grass,” I imagine, of Schweinfurth {Hordeum). 
These petrified downs were traversed by “khors”— 
meaning, in this case, broad shallow depressions whose 
sandy beds were often irradiated with a wealth of colour, 
in striking contrast to their bleak environment. Amidst 
a nucleus of low thorny scrub, grew dwarf cacti and 
flowering aloes, sansevieria, and euphorbia—the whole 
