522 
THE NILE CATARACTS. 
servants were treacherously cut to pieces by the Monassir Arabs. 
We are here at Hebeh more than 1000 feet above the level of the sea. 
The desert is still all drift and desolation, yet, that at some period it 
must have been otherwise, is shown by the massive ruins of old castles 
found at intervals along the shores ; two, in particular, built at El Kab 
at each side of the river, of immense strength. 
The regular courses of masonry, the burnt bricks of best workman¬ 
ship built into the well designed walls, the stairways to towers and 
flanking defences, all told of some period of civilisation and organised 
community, very different from the nomad tribes that now roamed this 
world of drift-sand. 
Thirty miles above El Kab, the Nile turns off once more to the 
north at Abu Hamed; at this turn is the second largest island in the 
river’s length, the island of Mograt, more than 20 miles long. The 
western extremity of Mograt was the extreme point reached by the 
advanced-guard of the river column on the 24th February, 1885, the 
day upon which the order to retire over the cataracts reached the 
column. 
On that day 215 boats were assembled at Huella at the end of the 
Monassir country, carrying 3000 soldiers. All the worst troubles 
seemed to be past, exactly that day month 217 boats had left the foot 
of the Fourth Cataract at Owli, 215 had gained the head of the hitherto 
impassable cataracts of Dar Monassir, and there were still nearly 60 
days’ food in the boats for the entire force. 
From Abu Hamed to Berber is 130 miles. In that distance there 
occur two cataracts, that of “ El Baggada,” or the “ Cows,” at 50 
miles, and again the “ Shellal el Umar,” or “ rapid of the wild asses,” 
at 80 miles distance. Then comes the town of Berber, from whence it 
is 200 miles to Khartoum, with a single rapid, that of the Shablouka, 
intervening. 
This cataract of the Shablouka is sometimes for some unexplained 
reason called the Sixth Cataract, whereas in reality it is the nineteenth. 
And now, at the top of the cataracts it is time to say a word about 
the life, other than human, which is to be met along the arid waste we 
have traversed. 
Limited though it be, it still bears the stamp of the river which 
has given it life. The camel, the oldest of all beasts of burden, 
greatest helper of man in the wilderness, is, of animals, the one most 
frequently in sight on the shores. In spite of all that has been said 
and written about him, it is doubtful if justice has ever been done to 
him. To the western he is uncouth, rough, illnatured, repellent, 
ugly, even the Arab, in his tradition of the creation of animals, 
declares, with reference to the first camel, that te The Lord Himself 
was greatly surprised at the creature he had made.” But that is only 
of outward shape and form. No other beast known to man is so use¬ 
ful to him, food, raiment, transport, these he gives, and if he gives 
them grudgingly we must remember that he is the oldest slave on earth, 
and that his very deformities of structure are supposed, by the best 
naturalists, to have been the slowly gathered inheritances of the 
immense time during which he has been the slave of man. 
