The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-08-31

(here he cracks mountain on allSnl- ing). And he seems quite satisfied with
 the measure of success he attains, though 1t is at best a success d'estime.
 If one could train this camel to buck I beg pardon, to "faire son colibri'-at
 the word of command, there would be
 some good in it. I know several per- sons whom I would mount for after
 noon rides, But 1t may not be. Art
 cannot be forced. It was as good luck
 would have 1t, the beast of one of the
 two musical Abadeh who provided this
 mornings diversion. His rider, taken
 by surprise, lost his seta, and caught
 by some entanglement of his equip
 ment, hung head downward from his
 makloofa throughout the whole perfor-
 nance.
 European after severe punishment
 of this kind, would probably have been laid up for week, but my Abadi, when
 at length he disengaged himself, merely fell into violent laughter, ejaculating,
 "Ya Salaam," and patted his camel ap-
 provingly. And the brute having flap ped himself in the breast ina self-satis- fled way as though saying, That's the
 kind of a fellow I am," the two joined
 the company again, and went on the
 best of friends. The Abdai sang no | more, however, and felt that the cam el had not labored in vain.
 Whether from the champagne spark | lie of the morning air, or from the fact l that here on camel back he was des- ert king seemingly enthroned, or by reason of the absence of his more live 1 lIy al lar I tfynW m h1l+ Ah1I1l ] Azim the Silent was to-day quite talk ative. And how wide is the field of l knowledge-how rich the information on matters African acquired by these desert princes! They do not see many people no doubt, but this eastern desert | is the high road to Mecca, and pilgrims pass constantly across 1t, bound for the holy city, hailing from all parts of the | great African continent. Many of 1 them spend years on the road, travel l ing very slowly, making long halts in l the various countries they traverse,
 their desultory progress checked now 1 by war, now by a famine, or again l by some devastating epidemic disease | One such party from I forget what l country, but 1t was, as Abdul Azim ex- 1 plained, away beyond the Uganda, l passed along this route quite recently. 1 It's members had started nine persons 1 They were now six. They had been | travelling for well nigh three years, and | there had been two births and five l deaths among them while on the road. l It is not, after all, a hard life, as life | goes in Africa, that these pilgrims l lead. They possess no sort of property, | and, starting with nothing, they tramp l in leisurely fashion from village to vil- l lage, from kingdom to sultanate, sup l piled everywhere with the little that l suffices for their needs, and in return 1 the story they can tell-through such involved and tortuous channels of in I terpretations as would be impossible to | describe--is reckoned ample payment I by each successful host.
 1 Much in this fashion did poor Mungo I Park greatest os all African travellers I accomplish his first journey to the Mi I ger though he, as an alien and white,
 suffered cruelty at the hands of the I Arab slave holders. whom also these l later pilgrims strive to avoid.
 Whether, the pilgrimage accomplish l ed, many, or indeed, any, of the sur vivors of these long marches ever re- turn to their own countries is another
 matter. During the past twelve years, l owing to the Khalifa's prohibitions, i the numbers of such parties have been very small though they are now in- l creasng. But even as it is, a consid- l erable percentage of these pilgrims is enrolled in the Soudanese battalions of | the Khedive's army. The drift to l Egypt, where, being nearer civiliza- 1 tion, it is harder for the poor to live, and by natural sequitur become sol l diers and in that state are better off 1 (with their pound month and an al- l lowance for wife) then they could
 ever in their lives have hoped to be. l Among our topics African that Abdul l Azinl. introduced were two that seemed 1 to give him much concern. I will dis
 cuss neither of them here. On some fu-
 ture occasion 1t may be necessary to bring forward either or both of them
 but now is not the time. I may, how ever, mention that one is the question
 of the methods of local administration adopted by the Italians throughout Erythrea, and officers among the Abys-
 sinians coupled with the growing cor diality which Abdul Amiz asserts, ex
 ists between King Menelik and the Kha1ifa.
 | That Rink Menelik's troups should
 be armed with Lebel rifles does not ap-
 pear to have greatly impressed the Bey. But the possibility, which he appeared quite gravely to envisage of our find ing the Khalifa's jehadieh hordes led
 against us by white officers seemed to
 shock and agitate him in no light de- gree.
 So keen indeed was Abdul Azim on l this subject, and so eager in his discus
 sion of all it's distressing phases, that
 we had left the rock Crocodile far be-
 hind us ere we remembered that it was
 what we came out to see But when at length confronted with the phenomenon
 on the return journey, we found that
 our loss had not been great. The re- 1 semblance between the rock Tinesah
 and him on the Nile was about as pro-
 nounced as that which one is called up-
 on to discover between extremely young