The natives, scattered about their fields, watched our caravan go by without unfriendliness or sign of misgiving, and then betook themselves again to their work with the serene dignity of men who till the soil. Both in the explicit picture it makes and in suggestion, their husbandry is very different from ours. The noble gesture familiar in our western fields, of the sower sowing his seed broadcast along the furrows, is lacking on African plains. The man I was watching walked straight on, holding in both hands a hoe bent into a right angle; at every second step, without stopping or even stooping, he made with it a tiny hole, hardly more than a scratch in the tawny sand. He was followed by a child, a boy clad in a simple sunbeam, carrying a calabash of millet, and parsimoniously letting fall into each hole a few grains that he summarily covered by turning a little earth over them with his bare toes. Happy lands, where man is satisfied with hard, coarse grain, and where the earth, in return for but small pains, breaks forth into abundant harvest. Which of us shall judge between them, and say whether it is better to be exacting in one’s wants, and with great labour to attain to one’s desire, or to be content with little and find that, with hardly an effort, that little may be had? I was welcomed on my arrival at Kebkebia by the commander, a native officer of the 13th Sudanese Battalion, Sub-Lieut. Saïd Effendi Adam, accompanied by a sergeant of Engineers, Sergeant Gasterens, R.E., in command of the wireless telegraphy post, and by the headman of the village. Thanks to their good offices, comfortable shelters were found for us, and I could procure all the food required for the use of my party. The village is of small extent, poor and dreary in appearance. It is said that the sultan Ali Dinar had the greater part of the inhabitants deported a few years ago after confiscating their property, to punish them for showing too much esteem for a certain marabout named Faki Sini, regarded in the district as a worker of miracles. The one that made the deepest impression on the natives, I was assured, consisted in being able to change colour and volume whenever he liked, and even make himself entirely invisible, which did not prevent him from letting himself be surprised and made short work of by the myrmidons of the sultan incensed at his growing prestige.