Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/181

Rh you reflect how excellent a training for the nerves of childhood it must be to have been carried down the cataract on the shoulders of your big brother from as early a date of your life as you can recall. The piastre hunt is soon concluded tant bien que mal, and the hunters are ready to try their luck a second time. Again there is a sudden stampede to the water's edge; again the headers from the high bank, and the flop-flopping of the shiny-coated little seals from the lower ledges, and away once more goes the flying procession of woolly pates down the water-race, now visible, now whelmed, until the deepest and swiftest swathes of hurrying water bury them and foam over them, and jerk them up to the surface again in the stiller pools below.

Well, it is an occupation like another, though to be sure it is not very like any other that is commonly practised in the West. Still there are points of resemblance, moral if not physical, between it and certain well reputed and indeed eminently respectable