The sakkiehs creak atrociously; and their creaking ranges over an unlimited gamut. From morn till dewy eve, from dewy eve till morn, they squeak, they squeal, they grind, they groan, they croak. Heard after dark, sakkieh answering to sakkieh, their melancholy chorus makes night hideous. To sleep through it is impossible. Being obliged to moor a few miles beyond Derr and having lain awake half the night, we offered a sakkieh-driver a couple of dollars if he would let his wheel rest till morning. But time and water are more precious than even dollars at this season; and the man refused. All we could do, therefore, was to punt into the middle of the river and lie off at a point as nearly as possible equidistant from our two nearest enemies. The native dearly loves the tree which costs him so much labor, and thinks it the chef-d’œuvre of creation. When Allah made the first man, says an Arab legend, he found he had a little clay to spare; so with that he made the palm. And to the poor Nubian, at all events, the gifts of the palm are almost divine; supplying food for his children, thatch for his hovel, timber for his water-wheel, ropes, matting, cups, bowls and even the strong drink forbidden by the prophet. The date-wine is yellowish-white, like whisky. It is not a wine, however, but a spirit; coarse, fiery, and unpalatable. Certain trees--as for instance the perky little pine of the German wald--are apt to become monotonous; but one never wearies of the palm. Whether taken singly or in masses, it is always graceful, always suggestive. To the sketcher on the Nile it is simply invaluable. It breaks the long parallels of river and bank and composes with the stern lines of Egyptian architecture as no other tree in the world could do. “Subjects, indeed!” said once upon a time an eminent artist to the present writer; “fiddlesticks about subjects! Your true painter can make a picture out of a post and a puddle.” Substitute a palm, however, for a post; combine it with anything that comes first--a camel, a shâdûf, a woman with a water-jar upon her head--and your picture stands before you ready made. Nothing more surprised me at first than the color of the palm-frond, which painters of eastern landscape are wont to depict of a hard bluish tint, like the color of a yucca leaf. Its true shade is a tender, bloomy, sea-green gray; difficult enough to match, but in most exquisite harmony with the glow of the sky and the gold of the desert. The palm-groves kept us company for many a mile, backed on the Arabian side by long level ranges of sandstone cliffs, horizontally stratified, like those of the Thebaid. We now scarcely ever saw a village--only palms and sakkiehs and sand-banks in the river. The villages were there, but invisible, being built on the verge of the desert. Arable land is too valuable in Nubia for either the living to dwell upon it or the dead to be buried in it.