things they use for hanging up food are also prettily decorated with shells and strips of red and blue cloth. The family occupying a hut sleep on mats in the inner part, with the usual wooden African pillows, and around the outer edge of the hut are collected their wooden bowls for sour milk, their skins for water, their incense-burners, and their limited number of household utensils. Often when he goes off to distant pasturages a Bishari will pack up his tent and household gods and leave them in a tree, where he will find them quite safe on his return. They live principally on milk and the products of their flocks, water being to them a far more precious article than milk. They are very knowledgeable in the mountain shrubs and herbs, and pointed out to us many which they eat for medicinal and other purposes; but the only one of these which we appreciated was a small red gourd climbing amongst the mimosa branches, resembling a tomato, _Cephalandra Indica_. This they call _gourod_, their usual word for gourd. Also they are, like the akridophagoi whom Agatharchides places on their coast, large consumers of locusts when in season; they catch them only when they have reached the flying stage, and roast them in the ashes. We often saw clouds of locusts in this district, devouring all the scanty herbage and literally filling the air. For many years past the Egyptian authority in these parts has been _nil_, and confined only to a few wretched forts on the coast. Dervish raids from the interior and the stoppage of whatever caravan trade there ever was have contributed to the miserable condition of affairs now existing. One can well understand why these miserable hounded tribes are wavering in their allegiance between the Egyptian Government and the Khalifa, whom they dread, and why they countenance the slave-traders, for the reason that they have no power to resist them. For all practical purposes it is a wretched country, waterless during a great part of the year, except where some deep ancient wells, scattered at wide intervals over the country, form centres where camels and flocks can be watered; and as we travelled along we were struck by the numbers of these wells which had been quite recently abandoned. But the mountains are magnificently grand, sharp in outline like Montserrat in Spain, and with deep and lovely gorges. Formerly they abounded in mines, and were celebrated for their mineral wealth, and if there is ever to be a revival in this country it will be from this source that hope will come.