In the early morning, before dawn, we passed a caravan going north. I rode over to see who they were and found that it was a party of Mogabara Arabs on their way up to the coast, and thence into Egypt. One of them, Ibrahaim el Bishari, is quite a well-known merchant who travels about Egypt, Tripoli and the Sudan. He had come lately up from Darfur, via Kufra, Jalow and Jerabub, and was going down to the Sudan again after spending some time in Egypt. He talked about people I knew in Darfur and carried “chits” from a number of Englishmen. His fellows looked a fine lot of men, very different to the few Siwans who were travelling with them. I should have liked to have seen the stuff in his loads; he said he had some good carpets that he hoped to sell in Egypt. We wished each other a prosperous journey, and so parted “like ships that pass in the night.” We camped at midday within sight of the high country above the oasis. This morning one of my men was talking about the Sudan and touched on the “Bilad el Kelab”—the Country of Dogs. All Sudanese believe that this place exists somewhere down in the south of the Sudan towards Uganda. I have seen them draw maps on the sand to show its position. In this mysterious country all the men become dogs at sunset time and roam about the gloomy forests like the werewolves of mediæval fiction. I have heard the men yarning over the camp fires and saying how their cousin’s wife’s brother—or some such distant relation—actually reached this country and returned alive. Of course it is always somebody else who saw it, but the story is firmly believed by all Sudanese, and so it is a very favourite topic of conversation. Sometimes they enlarge on it and tell how So-and-So married a wife from that country and one night a number of dogs arrived at his hut and carried the woman away with them.