Page:First Footsteps in East Africa, 1894 - Volume 1.djvu/152

 the boys' crest, wore a circlet of curly hair round the head, carried the weakling lambs and kids, or aided their mammas in transporting the baby. Apparently in great fear of the "All" or Commando, the Bedouins anxiously inquired if I had my "fire" with me [26], and begged us to take the post of honour--the van. As our little party pricked forward, the camels started in alarm, and we were surprised to find that this tribe did not know the difference between horses and mules. Whenever the boys lost time in sport or quarrel, they were threatened by their fathers with the jaws of that ogre, the white stranger; and the women exclaimed, as they saw us approach, "Here comes the old man who knows knowledge!" [27] Having skirted the sea for two hours, I rode off with the End of Time to inspect the Dihh Silil [28], a fiumara which runs from the western hills north-eastwards to the sea. Its course is marked by a long line of graceful tamarisks, whose vivid green looked doubly bright set off by tawny stubble and amethyst-blue sky. These freshets are the Edens of Adel. The banks are charmingly wooded with acacias of many varieties, some thorned like the fabled Zakkum, others parachute-shaped, and planted in impenetrable thickets: huge white creepers, snake-shaped, enclasp giant trees, or connect with their cordage the higher boughs, or depend like cables from the lower branches to the ground. Luxuriant parasites abound: here they form domes of