great daring, pursuing the beasts in tiny ambatch canoes, which are often broken up by the infuriated bulls. They plunge a barbed spearhead into the skin, and then paddle ashore with the end of the attached rope; every one lends a hand, and the struggling brute is eventually hauled ashore and despatched. North of Fashoda we saw many herds of waterbuck, hartebeeste (_Senegalensis?_), and roan grazing on the flats which lie between the marshy banks and the bush. One evening I was standing on deck, and noticed ahead of the steamer an animal sitting on the top of the bank watching us. As we passed alongside, it moved, and we saw that it was a splendid leopard. It strolled away quite unconcernedly, watching us round its shoulder, and slowly swishing its long tail to and fro; then it went and sat under a tree, whence it lazily regarded us till we were out of sight. At Djebel Ain we had to leave the gunboat, as the extraordinarily low Nile prevented steamers from crossing the ford, and we were forced to proceed to the next navigable stretch in a large gyassa or native boat. Djebel Ain is the end of the northern telegraph line, and I could at last wire and relieve the anxiety of my friends and relations. It was just fourteen months since I had left the end of the southern, or Mr. Rhodes’s, section. Hayes-Sadler’s Soudanese orderly, who looked after me, was a most delightful old gentleman. He could not quite understand me, and was continually demanding explanations of me: "Whence comes he, this man?" "Is he a soldier?" Hayes-Sadler explained that I was not, but was travelling for the pleasure of seeing the country. "Ah! you are a strange people, you English Effendis: how comes it that he wears not the moustache even as the other Effendis?" He was informed that I was of a slightly different ginss (tribe) to the others, and was quite satisfied at the explanation. After that he referred to me as "the Great White Effendi from the South." "He is a strange man, and verily comes from afar; yet I like that man--I look upon him as the apple of my eye," he informed his master. He was a splendid fellow, and I much enjoyed his polite and gentlemanly attentions after the dirty creatures with whom I had so long been in contact. At the northern end of the ford we found the steamer waiting for us, and I first met Captain Gage and Dr. Milne, of whom I had heard so much. We were a numerous and jolly party on board, and with the exception of a morning’s sand-grouse shooting, in the course of which eight guns bagged something over one hundred and fifty brace in a couple of hours, we arrived without further incident at Omdurman. Here we were bewildered with true Egyptian Army hospitality, and our time was spent in wildly flying from mess to mess.