The deceased being unmarried, his sister led the choir of mourners. She was a tall, gaunt young woman of the plainest Nubian type, with high cheek-bones, eyes slanting upward at the corners, and an enormous mouth full of glittering teeth. On her head she wore a white cloth smeared with dust. Her companions were distinguished by a narrow white fillet, bound about the brow and tied with two long ends behind. They had hidden their necklaces and bracelets and wore trailing robes and shawls and loose trousers of black or blue calico. We stood for a long time watching their uncouth dance. None of the women seemed to notice us; but the men made way civilly and gravely, letting us pass to the front, that we might get a better view of the ceremony. By and by an old woman rose slowly from the midst of those who were sitting and moved with tottering, uncertain steps toward a higher point of ground, a little apart from the crowd. There was a movement of compassion among the men; one of whom turned to the writer and said, gently: “His mother.” She was a small, feeble old woman, very poorly clad. Her hands and arms were like the hands and arms of a mummy, and her withered black face looked ghastly under its mask of dust. For a few moments, swaying her body slowly to and fro, she watched the grave-diggers stamping down the sand; then stretched out her arms and broke into a torrent of lamentations. The dialect of Derr[71] is strange and barbarous; but we felt as if we understood every word she uttered. Presently the tears began to make channels down her cheeks--her voice became choked with sobs--and, falling down in a sort of helpless heap, like a broken-hearted dog, she lay with her face to the ground, and there stayed. Meanwhile, the sand being now filled in and mounded up, the men betook themselves to a place where the rock had given way and selected a couple of big stones from the débris. These they placed at the head and foot of the grave and all was done. Instantly--perhaps at an appointed signal, though we saw none given--the wailing ceased; the women rose; every tongue was loosened; and the whole became a moving, animated, noisy throng dispersing in a dozen different directions. We turned away with the rest, the writer and the painter rambling off in search of the temple, while the other three devoted themselves to the pursuit of baskets and native jewelry. When we looked back presently the crowd was gone; but the desolate mother still lay motionless in the dust.