Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 34 THE ATBARA IN FLOOD. thirty feet in depth and from four hundred yards to half a mile in breadth, ploughed through the heart of the desert, its edges marked by a thin growth of leafless mimosas and dome palms. The only trace of water was here and there a rush-fringed pool which the impetuous torrent had hollowed out in the sudden bends in the river's course, and where disported themselves hippopotami, crocodiles, and immense turtles, that had long ago adjusted their relations on a friendly footing on the discovery that none of them could do harm to the others. On the 23rd of June, the simoom was blowing with overpowering force; the heat was furnace-like, and the tents of the travellers were covered with several inches of drifted sand. Above, in the Abyssinian mountains, however, the lightnings were playing and the rains were falling as if the windows of heaven had been opened. The monsoon had set in; the rising streams were choking their narrow channels in their frantic rush to the lowlands, and were tearing away huge masses of the rich dark soil, to be spread a month hence over the flat plains of Egypt. The party encamped on the Atbara heard through the night a sound as if of distant thunder; but it was " the roar of the approaching water." The traveller describes the scene best in his own words:— " On the morning of the 24th of June I stood on the banks of the noble Atbara river at break of day. Wonder of the desert! Yesterday there was a barren sheet of glaring sand, with a fringe of withered bush and trees upon its borders that cut the yellow ex- THE CLUE TO THE MYSTERY. 35 panse of desert. For days we had journeyed along the exhausted bed. All nature, even in nature's poverty, was most poor: no bush could boast a leaf, no tree could throw a shade; crisp gums cra...