A messenger had to carry them half a dozen miles and return immediately to rejoin, and he was waiting for our correspondence. The point of junction of the river Rahad with the Blue Nile is half a mile distant from Abou Harras, and my companions walked to the spot later in the day. I attended to some odd jobs of the kind which a traveller always finds he has in arrear, and then I tried for fish, but caught nothing and lost my spinner. Many herons had taken their station on a strip of sand about a hundred yards from the place where I stood, and paid no heed to my presence. On this day we had the good luck to receive two English visitors. The first was Mr. Wilson, the Moudir of Wad-el-Medani. We could only offer him a cup of rather muddy tea; but the village offered him the public reception, and the music was as loud as ever at the second performance. Our second guest was Bimbashi Gwynn, who landed from the sternwheeler which had left Khartoum on the 10th. He was on the way to Abyssinia to settle the boundary question. He had been in that country before, and as he was able to stay and dine with us, we had the benefit of many useful hints in the course of a pleasant chat in the evening. [Illustration: VILLAGE MUSICIANS AT ABOU HARRAS. _See p._ 14.] At Abou Harras we parted company with our guide, drivers, and forty camels. There was no unhappiness at the leave-taking. We inspected the men and animals that we had hired in their place, and devoutly hoped we had made a better choice. On the following morning the thermometer again sank to 43 degrees, and the atmosphere and the water seemed bitterly cold to us. We started on the road to Gedaref just before nine o’clock. Our new guide was a Greek, who had made the journey many times, and was said to know everything that need be known. I was sceptical. Our route followed the course of the telegraph, and lay at first beside the Rahad. This river differs considerably in the dry season from the Blue Nile. In the latter we had found a fairly fast current flowing over a stony or sandy bed between banks composed of mud. The stream passed through a succession of shallows and deep pools. The Rahad, at the point of junction with the Nile, was entirely dry, and we proceeded some distance up the course before we found pools. The banks are high and steep. I do not think that Sir Samuel Baker at all exaggerated the fertility and value of the land in this region. He wrote: “The entire country would be a mine of wealth were it planted with cotton.”[8] The Rahad, as he said, “flows through rich alluvial soil; the country is a vast level plain, with so trifling a fall that the current of the river is gentle.”[9] This circumstance would facilitate irrigation. Besides mimosa trees and much other timber, we found in this region matted growths of bushes and wide stretches of long grass now tangled on the ground—all bearing testimony to the quality of the soil.