river-beds, through patches of
olive-trees, pink oleander, and castor-oil plant; leaving Arab douars
behind; meeting with white cow-birds which recalled Tetuan; passing men
with merchandise on camels and donkeys, strings of country people, and
wanderers of all sorts; stopping to rest near wells where swallows were
building in the brickwork and donkeys stood asleep in the shade; watching
Arabs beating out corn with sticks, men ploughing, until we were once
more amongst "greenery" and in a fertile stretch of country. Surely there
was a river near. We passed fine crops of maize; onions were doing
famously; fields of bearded wheat rustled in a life-giving breeze. And
then the Wad-el-Nyfs, the largest river we had to cross, came into sight.
Said at the outset precipitated himself into a great hole, and was well
ducked: eventually we all landed safely on the other side, though the
start was far from reassuring, some Arabs on the bank telling us it was
"not good" to cross, and wading down into the torrent, for us to see that
the water took them up to their necks almost at once, sweeping them
down-stream. Before we rode into the water every man divested himself of
each particle of clothing which he wore; and R. got across with two
dark-skinned individuals clinging on to her legs, one on each side of the
mule, a third hanging on to its bridle, and a fourth at its tail; while I
followed also with four attendants. Not long ago, a party of missionaries
was fording one of these very rivers, and neglected to have men at the
mules' heads, one of which stumbled and threw its rider into the rapid
stream: she was drowned. It was not deep at the time, or more precaution
would have been taken: on the other hand, the stream is always like a
mill-race, an accident can happen in a moment, and therefore a rule
should be made, and never under any circumstances broken, to the effect
that every rider have a man at the mule's head, and more than one,
according to the state of the river.

We had a long hot ride to Tamsloect: the breeze, which was westerly, was
useless to us; the track led over stony yellow hills; now and again we
caught glimpses of the Kutobea standing up very far away; and all the
time the great snow-fields, on the vast mountains, close upon our right,
looked tantalizingly near and cold. Occasionally we watered the mules at
a stream: tortoises were swimming about in one of these. But on the whole
it was a singularly uneventful and