When we came forth the next morning, our Arabs had all anointed themselves and put on good clothes; but what more particularly surprised us was the sight of their stately white wigs, making them look quite reverend. It is a part of their “dress,” to comb the hair into a high _toupé_, which is sprinkled with peculiar finely drifted butter, shining white, as if with powder. In a little while, however, when the sun is risen higher, this fat snow melts, and then the hair looks all covered with innumerable pearly dew-drops, till these, too, disappear, and run down their shoulders and neck from their dark brown hair, spreading a light upon their well-burned limbs, like antique bronze statues. We set forward the next morning at eight o’clock, with a new camel that we had found opportunity to exchange for a tired one. The valley becomes broader and more fertile the nearer we come to the island of Meroë; the desert itself became more rank and wild, like steppes. The first station was Geg, where we spent the night in an open space; the air is very, very warm; at half-past five in the afternoon we had 25° Reaumur. The second night we stayed on the other side of Abu Hashîn, in the neighbourhood of a village, which is in reality no station, as we desired to pass the five usual stations in four days; the third day we stopped out in the air by a cataract of the Nile. On the fourth day from Abu Hammed, we kept a little further away from the river in the desert, but still within the limits of the original valley, if I may so call a yellow earth, which is not covered by the inundations, but is dug out by the villagers immediately below the sand, in order to mend their fields. We halted in the evening at the village of El Chôr, an hour from El Mechêref, and arrived in the metropolis of the province of Berber early on the fifth day. I sent the dragoman forward to announce us, and to demand a house, which we received, and immediately entered upon. The Mudhir of Berber was in Dâmer; his vakeel, or lieutenant, visited us, and soon came Hassan Chalif, the chief Arab sheikh, who promised us better camels to Dâmer, was rejoiced to hear good tidings of his and our friends, Linant and Bonomi, and amused himself with our own books of plates, in which he found portraits of his relations and ancestors. We had scarcely arrived, ere we received intelligence that Hassan Pasha had entered the town on another side. He had journeyed from Korusko to his province of Dongola, and now returned from Edabbe, on the southern boundaries of Dongola, right through the desert of El Mechêref, where Enrin, the new Pasha of Chartûm, had come to meet him. The rencontre caused some disturbance in our plans; but we managed to travel southward on the next morning, the 22nd of January, soon after Hassan Pasha’s departure, after leaving two camels, no longer wanted for water-carrying, behind, and exchanging three others for better ones.