Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/184



is a scattered Nubian hamlet of some forty or fifty houses, with one larger building, the abode of the local Sheikh, conspicuous in its midst. Behind it stretch the long levels of the Arabian Desert, and somewhat further in its rear arises a barren ridge of hills to a height of some three or four hundred feet. The Nile, here broad and peaceful, stealing smoothly down to its rocky prison at Bab-el-Kalabshi, has edged the little village with a narrow strip of its richly fertile soil, now thickly covered with green-leaved shrubs of the kiki and sweet with flowering beans. Between us and the river, as we pass along the broken line of mud-cabins, stand the cattle-pens of the peasantry, no longer, thanks