Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/183

Rh this band of Nubian swimmers and "log-rollers" are always on the spot.

Where do they spring from? Who knows? No one whom we asked could tell. There is no village visible; for aught that appears the spot is miles from any human habitation. Yet just as neither man nor beast can die in the desert but within a few minutes those tiny specks which are to grow into vultures appear mysteriously on the horizon, so the European tourists cannot show in any force in the neighbourhood of this rocky bend, but straightway the desert sand is dotted with the black nude figures of these singular athletes ready and eager to plunge into a torrent and be whirled down a water-slope for little more than what an English working man would call the "price of a pint."