These northern tribes, isolated in the deserts, possess the primitive, yet most advanced, virtue of strict honesty. During the winter, when rain has fallen upon certain favoured spots and most of the population has migrated to them, one frequently comes across small trees bearing bundles of matting, boards, and sticks, the materials of a tent-house. The owner has left the country for the time the grazing will last, and, not wishing to take all his house with him, merely puts the materials out of the reach of the goats, secure in finding them untouched, not even borrowed, on his return two or three months later; this too in a country where even a bit of old sacking is a thing of value. CHAPTER IV THE DAILY LIFE OF THE PEOPLE At first sight, the country seems to be one from which no human being could extract the barest subsistence. The usual explanation, that the natives live by stealing, did not help me to an understanding, as that is no more an economic possibility than the story of the two old women who lived by taking in each other’s washing. The fact is, the Sudan sheep, goats and camels, have a marvellous tenacity of life, and on their sufferings the native exists. I once had acquaintance with a British donkey to whom corn was given on a piece of stiff brown paper, to prevent waste. When the corn was done, the donkey proceeded to eat the brown paper before going to his desert of thistles. What luxury a diet of brown paper and thistles would be to a Sudan goat! After nibbling dry sticks all day in the desert, they come and eat resinous shavings from my workshops, or pick up single grains of corn from the sand where our camels have been fed, shewing that a day’s feeding leaves them ravenous beyond all the British donkey’s idea of hunger. My particular village is richer than most places on the coast in possessing a few square miles of scattered acacias which bear a few little leaves when all else fails. There are some salt woody plants too (Arabic, _hamid_ = sour) and some low trees (“Asal” or “adlîb”) which are a vivid green all the year round, the latter of which, however, all animals, except camels, refuse.