a Muslim holy place very edifying.

I find an exceedingly pleasant man here, an Abab'deh, a very great Sheykh
from beyond Khartoum, a man of fifty I suppose, with manners like an
English nobleman, simple and polite and very intelligent. He wants to
take me to Khartoum for two months up and back, having a tent and a
_takhterawan_ (camel-litter) and to show me the Bishareen in the desert.
We traced the route on my map which to my surprise he understood, and I
found he had travelled into Zanzibar and knew of the existence of the
Cape of Good Hope and the English colony there. He had also travelled in
the Dinka and Shurook country where the men are seven feet and over high
(Alexander saw a Dinka girl at Cairo three inches taller than himself!).
He knows Madlle. Tine and says she is 'on everyone's head and in their
eyes' where she has been. You may fancy that I find Sheykh Alee very
good company.

To-day the sand in front of the house is thronged with all the poor
people with their camels, of which the Government has made a new levy of
eight camels to every thousand feddans. The poor beasts are sent off to
transport troops in the Soudan, and not being used to the desert, they
all die--at all events their owners never see one of them again. The
discontent is growing stronger every day. Last week the people were
cursing the Pasha in the streets of Assouan, and every one talks aloud of
what they think.

_January_ 11.--The whole place is in desolation, the men are being
beaten, one because his camel is not good enough, another because its
saddle is old and shabby, and the rest because they have not money enough
to pay two months' food and the wages of one man, to every four camels,
to be paid for the use of the Government beforehand. The _courbash_ has
been going on my neighbours' backs and feet all the morning. It is a new
sensation too when a friend turns up his sleeve and shows the marks of
the wooden handcuffs and the gall of the chain on his throat. The system
of wholesale extortion and spoliation has reached a point beyond which it
would be difficult to go. The story of Naboth's vineyard is repeated
daily on the largest scale. I grieve for Abdallah-el-Habbashee and men
of high position like him, sent to die by disease (or murder), in
Fazoghou, but I grieve still more over the daily anguish of the poor
fellaheen, who are forced to take the bread from the mouths of their
starving families and to eat it while toi