The bloodthirsty mob, led by the Khalifa, as principal maniac, charged across an open plain. Each determined dervish carried in his right hand a six foot spear, with which he hoped to do considerable damage. When he still lacked about a mile of being within poking distance of the hated infidel, the machine guns opened up and began to sweep the plain back and forth in long regular swaths, just as the sickle sweeps through the yellow grain. It was quite a handicap for the invincible children of Allah. They could not use their six foot spears on anyone a mile away, and before they could recover from the chagrin occasioned by this unexpected move on the part of the enemy, about eleven thousand of them had winged their way to eternal happiness and the others were radiating in all directions, pursued by those who wished to civilise them and bring them under British control. Those of the dervishes who escaped are supposed to be still running. At least they never came back to start another Messiah movement. Ten years ago the Soudan was sealed to the whole world and death waited for the unbeliever who crossed the border. To-day the _table d'hote_ roams unafraid, and the illustrated post card blooms even as the rose. The Nile of which you have read and along which are scattered the simon pure monuments of antiquity is the six hundred miles of winding river between Assouan, or First Cataract, and the sea. For the entire distance, until it spreads into a fan-shaped delta and filters into the Mediterranean, the stream is walled in by flat-topped hills of barren aspect. They are capped with limestone and carpeted about with shifting sands, and they look for all the world like the mesas of New Mexico and Arizona, for they lie baking in the same kind of clarified sunshine. This meandering hollow between the rugged hill ranges is the Valley of the Nile. Here and there the hills close in until the river banks are high and chalky cliffs. At one point the valley spreads to a width of thirty-three miles. East and west of the hills are vast areas of desert without even a spear of vegetation except where there is a miraculous rise of water to the surface. These spots are grateful landmarks of clustered palms and are known as oases.