There was some danger of a general fight between the two tribes, but a third and impartial set came down from the hills to keep the peace. Next day came requests that we should dress the wounds. So, my wife accompanying me, we rode out to a tent among the trees, in the dark depths of which we found two savage half-witted looking men stolidly sitting sniffing onion and spices with which their noses were plugged to prevent them inhaling any possible odour of their wounds. Each had three or four cuts about six or eight inches long and one to two deep. I tried more or less to close up the edges of the cuts in one man’s back, which would have caused great pain to a white man; if I hurt this one at all he only shewed it by laughing. We were far from laughter in that dark and smelling tent and glad to get under way again. We were then led to the house of the dying man and found a tent among the acacia bushes surrounded by a semicircle of men sitting silently to await what might befall, every man fully armed with swords, daggers and spears, apparently ready to wreak vengeance the moment the victim should die. We found the man sitting in the middle of the tent, a roughly circular hole in his forehead exposing the pulsating brain. We could do nothing for him; it would have been no use suggesting sending him to Port Sudan hospital, though that might have saved his life. Of course the man was completely unconscious, his sitting up was explained by the fact that he remained in any position in which he might be placed. It was more than a week before he died and meanwhile the murderer had gone into the country of another tribe. For the present he is safe, but should he return without the blood money his life is forfeit. It is usual for a murderer to collect say £10 from the charitable, the payment of which to the next of kin to the murdered man may be the condition of peace between them. One imagines him on his tramp repeating, “I am a poor man and having committed a murder, a most worthy object of your charity. Give me a little towards the blood money.” It seems an easy way of settling for a murder, but five to ten years’ exile as a beggar in another tribe must be a very serious thing for these family-loving people. It is at any rate less barbarous than that horror of civilisation, penal servitude for life. It is one of those cases where the ends of justice are well served by the Government’s policy of leaving, under supervision, whatever of administration can justly be left to the natural rulers of these wanderers among inaccessible mountains. In this particular case I hear the avengers are implacable, no mediation will induce them to accept blood money, they must have the murderer’s life.