THE DESERTS BETWEEN CAIRO AND KHARTOUM.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IX, Issue 77, 4 March 1885, Page 2

THE DESERTS BETWEEN CAIRO AND KHARTOUM.

The Arabs divide their deserts into two kinda, Th«* irhst'islcalled eljebelot el bevryc, meaning mountain or wilderness. In this kind of deserts there is more or less vegetation,' always very ' scanty ; but yet it is there the Bedouins roam awl raise their flocks and camels. Gazelles and other game are also found. The desert between BerberjandSoaakira. is chiefly of this kind' The other sort is called the atmoor, and it is impossible to imagine anything more barren . and desolate. It is literally; nothing but band and rocks. Not a bush, not a blade of grass ever grew there, and consequently no animal life at all, not even insects. They are like oceans which you. cross on your "desert ships," but where it is death to tarry. The ostrich and the hyena cross them swiftly by night. These atmoors are generally from <ight to ten days across, with . one group of wells m the middle. Such is the At moor of Shigree, which I crossed m nine days, and that of Korosko m seven (two days less than the usual tiir.e^). Only one group of wells is found half way, which is called mourn (bitter) Mono but camels and Bedouins can drink its water. Travellers always carry enough Nile water to last them; across: It is the only desert where no guides' are needed, for the track is perfectly/ marked by the skeletons of camels and cattle, which, as 1 counted them, average sixty to the mile on the best ''{Hurts of the trail, and four hundred ou the worst. Thousands of camels and oxen perish there yonrly. 'Hie latter are driveu fcoin, the/ Upper Nile, scantily watered once m fortyeight hours on the inarch, and a. large proportion of them die oh the ,way. The hyenas and vultures, which are the only denizens of the atiiioor, oick their bones clean before the 'next inbrningy&nd the tierce sun-heat dues the hides aud bonce, so that the stench of carrion never taints the dessrt air.