THE NILE CATARACTS. 
523 
“ There is a look about a camel/'’ wrote an English officer from the 
Soudan, “which always gives me the idea that he is going a long way off.” 
It is true, and he has come a long way too. How many millions of desert 
miles has the camel travelled since that far off day when we read that 
Isaac e< lifted up his eyes and saw camels coming afar off? ” 
All these ages of toil and thirst seem to have concentrated their 
essence in this strange beast ; why should he be anything but sulky, 
and stubborn, and impatient ? His very food is made up of things that 
bristle with spikes and thorns. “ When I attempted to pat him after 
he had brought me safely through the desert in July,” writes the officer 
already quoted, “he turned towards me with a savage growl. He had 
done his work, he needed no thanks.” 
Another remnant of old world life which the Nile still preserves, 
but one differing in every respect from the camel, is the crocodile. 
He is numerous at all the cataracts from Dal upwards, but especially 
on all the sand banks in the Shagghiea country ; but because he is 
not now seen in reaches of the river below the Second Cataract, it is 
not to be supposed that he has altogether abandoned these waters. 
During the hot season of 1885, when I was living in a Dahabiha at 
Wady Haifa, a rumour went about among the natives that there was 
a very large crocodile in the river at that place. My boat had been 
there for months, and as the water shrunk daily into smaller volume, 
and there was no appearance of the monster, I thought it was impossible 
he could be there, but one very hot evening when 1 was sitting at the 
stern of the boat, all at once the head of an enormous crocodile was 
thrust above the surface a few yards distant. 
During the inundation, and through the winter months, the natives 
seem to take little heed of the presence of the reptile ; but in the hot 
season before the river rises, their methods are quite different; you 
will then see the women at all the villages in Dar Shagghiea throwing 
stones and lumps of dry mud into the water to drive away the crocodiles 
from the proximity of the bank while their companions are filling their 
pitchers in the shallow margins. 
The natives assert that the crocodile swallows large quantities of 
round stones at one season of the year for the purpose of keeping 
himself on the bottom of the river ; certain is it that there is a period 
of the year when he seldom shows above the surface, and I can my¬ 
self vouch for the fact that the stomach of a large crocodile, killed at 
Merawe in 1885, was found to contain a bushelful or more of round 
stones, many of them as large as eggs, quite smooth and polished. 
Of fishes, the river possesses a vast number and variety, some of 
great size. The largest are only occasionally taken when the river is 
falling rapidly. Sometimes at this period a monster fish will find 
himself caught in shallow water, or held inside a ledge of rocks which 
prevents his getting into the deeper river. At Abu Fatmeh, in 
November, 1884, my crew of West African Krooboys secured a very 
large specimen of the Samous, a Nile salmon, among some rocks where 
they were bathing; the fish weighed 115 pounds, and was as perfect 
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