104 UGANDA AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN.

station is a white tunic and trousers, boots, fez, and a cartridge-belt, made of leopard's skin, round the waist, by which is suspended the sword-bayonet and knife. On the march they are dressed in brown clothes, with knickerbockers, and but seldom wear boots. The artillerymen are the only soldiers who are Egyptians, and their health is very unsatisfactory ; even the officers are now in most instances natives.

One word should be said about the " dragomen."

These men were originally slaves of the old slavedealers. They all speak Arabic, and were trained first as gun-boys, and now are employed as a kind of native police. Each native village is required to support one or more of these men, who are responsible for the peace of the place, and also superintend the payment of the grain-tax to the government. Some twenty or thirty of them live near a fort, and when porters are wanted, or natives required for work at the station, they are commissioned to collect the requisite number. As Africans cannot count, the old-fashioned practice of giving bundles of straws containing the required number is still continued.

Crime is almost unknown. The only difficulty of the authorities is in keeping up a strict discipline, without which it is impossible to maintain a good government; it being a fact that Africans are like overgrown children, and require firm but