The produce of Ghattas’s Company was this year four hundred loads, being somewhere about 220 cwt., which would be worth in Khartoom nearly 4000_l._ In order to reach this amount, certainly not less than three hundred elephants had been destroyed, and probably considerably more. Although the ants at this spot did not abound in the wholesale way in which they did in many other Seribas, there were nevertheless plenty of inconveniences in my quarters, and like every other traveller I had to get accustomed to them as soon as I could. My want of space was a great difficulty. I was hardly at all better off in the hut where I ordinarily lived than in an old overcrowded lumber room. I had no cupboards and no small chests, and consequently I was compelled to be ever packing up and unpacking my thousand bits of property. The framework, of my own construction, which reached up into the circular roof did something to increase my accommodation, and I hung bags upon it containing my clothes and my linen, and a whole host of little things besides I stuck into the straw thatch above. Under such circumstances, no wonder that I had perpetual conflict with rats, crickets, and cock-roaches, and that they were a constant source of annoyance. [Sidenote: NOXIOUS VERMIN.] The only method which was really an effectual guarantee for the protection of any articles from being gnawed to bits was to hang them up; but whenever at nightfall I had any packages which could not be suspended there was one device of which I made use, and which was tolerably successful in keeping rats at a distance. One of the commonest animals hereabouts was the wild cat of the steppes (_Felis maniculata_). Although the natives do not breed them as domestic animals, yet they catch them separately when they are quite young and find no difficulty in reconciling them to a life about their huts and enclosures, where they grow up and wage their natural warfare against the rats. I procured several of these cats, which, after they had been kept tied up for several days, seemed to lose a considerable measure of their ferocity and to adapt themselves to an indoor existence so as to approach in many ways to the habits of the common cat. By night I attached them to my parcels, which were otherwise in jeopardy, and by this means I could go to bed without further fear of any depredations from the rats. Quite helpless, however, did I appear with regard to the devastations of the crickets, which found their way through my stoutest chests, ate holes into all my bags, and actually fretted my very wearing-apparel and body-linen. Subsequently I received a supply of borax, and this turned out to be an adequate security against their mischief.