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Updated: June 14, 2025
In a few minutes my horses and donkeys were luxuriating on the rich herbage, not having tasted grass for some days; the camels revelled in the foliage of the dark green mimosas; and the men, having found on the march a buffalo that had been caught in a trap and there killed by a lion, obtained some meat, and the whole party were feeding.
Above were the arching boughs of giant trees; below and all about, a wealth of old-fashioned bloom. The sunlight drifted through shadowing fringe-trees, mimosas, magnolias, and oaks. Hoary old age marked the garden in the breadth of the box, in the height of the slow-growing yews, and in the denseness of the ivy that swathed the great-girthed trees.
The donkeys being saddled, we at once started with our attendant, Hadji Achmet, at about five miles per hour, in advance of our slower caravan. The route was upon the river's margin, due east, through a sandy copse of thorny mimosas which fringed the river's course for about a quarter of a mile on either side; beyond this all was desert.
There was the cavalry which had hunted Strachan, but they were but a handful. And the route to Shebacat was open desert, so far as the eye could reach from the balcony, with but few mimosas or black rocks. When he had quite settled his plans he felt easier, and returned to the others.
Throughout the route the barren sand stretched to the horizon on the left, while on the right, within a mile of the Nile, the soil was sufficiently rich to support a certain amount of vegetation chiefly dwarf mimosas and the Asclepias gigantea.
The ground was awkward for riding at full speed, as it was an open forest of mimosas, which, although wide apart, were very difficult to avoid, owing to the low crowns of spreading branches, and these, being armed with fish-hook thorns, would have been serious in a collision. I kept the party in view until in about a mile we arrived upon open ground.
Mimosas with hemispheric tops, and stems only four or five feet high, alone vary the dull uniformity of the savannahs. Their branches are bent towards the ground or spread out like umbrellas. Wherever there are deep declivities, or masses of rocks half covered with mould, the clusia or cupey, with great nymphaea flowers, displays its beautiful verdure.
All these villages are situated in the midst of a sandy and desolate plain; a few mimosas, aloes, senna plants, and cactuses struggle for life in the burning sand. The country residences of the English and French consuls shine like oases in this desert, great pains having been taken to introduce trees that thrive even in such a locality.
It is astonishing to observe the waste of trees that are upturned by a large herd of these animals, sometimes out of sheer wantonness, during their passage through a forest. The dense tops of mimosas are a great attraction, and there can be no doubt that elephants work collectively to dig out and to overthrow the trees that would be too large for the strength of a single animal.
And getting up from his table, he passed the fiddlers with the dark-white skins, out into the Place. He went up the side streets to the back of her hotel, and stood by the railings of the garden one of those hotel gardens which exist but to figure in advertisements, with its few arid palms, its paths staring white between them, and a fringe of dusty lilacs and mimosas.
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