e city, I cannot find some opportunity of slipping
off and making my way there. Whether it will be prudent to do so is
another question, for I doubt whether the Egyptian troops there will
offer any resolute resistance to the Dervish hosts; and in that case, I
should have to endeavour to make my way down to Dongola, and from there
either by boat or by the river bank to Assouan.

"A month later. I have not written for some time, because there has
been nothing special to put down. All the little details of the life
here can be told to my dear wife, if I should ever see her again; but
they are not of sufficient interest to write down. I have been living
at the Emir's house, ever since. I do not know what special office I am
supposed to occupy in his household--that is, what office the people in
general think that I hold. In fact, I am his guest, and an honoured
one. When he goes out I ride beside him and Abu, who has now
sufficiently recovered to sit his horse. I consider myself as medical
attendant, in ordinary, to him and his family. I have given up all
practice in the town--in the first place because I do not wish to make
enemies of the two doctors, who really seem very good fellows, and I am
glad to find that they have performed two or three operations
successfully; and in the second place, were I to go about trying to
cure the sick, people would get so interested in me that I should be
continually questioned as to how I attained my marvellous skill.
Happily, though no doubt they must have felt somewhat jealous at my
success with Abu, I have been able to do the hakims some service, put
fees into their pockets, and at the same time benefited poor people
here. I have told them that, just as I recognized the bottle of
chloroform, so I have recognized some of the bottles from which the
white hakims used to give powder to sick people.

"'For instance,' I said, 'you see this bottle, which is of a different
shape from the others. It is full of a white, feathery-looking powder.
They used to give this to people suffering from fever--about as much as
you could put on your nail for men and women, and half as much for
children. They used to put it in a little water, and stir it up, and
give it to them night and morning. They call it kena, or something like
that. It did a great deal of good, and generally drove away the fever.

"'This other bottle they also used a good deal. They put a little of
its contents in water, and it made