CAIRO TO KISUMU some idea of this Central African grain market. You must add the tents of canvas or the mat shelters in which the native merchants stay while waiting for their cus¬ tomers, as well as a crowd of black-skinned, white-gowned men and women moving about sampling the wares and buying or selling.

The merchants watch the grain all day, and if they are forced to go away at nightfall they smooth the hills out and make cabalistic marks upon them so that they can easily tell if their property has been disturbed during their absence. The most common grains sold here are wheat, barley, and dura. The last named is ground to a flour either in hand mills or between stones moved about by bullocks or camels, and is eaten in the shape of round loaves of about the circumference of a tea plate and perhaps two inches thick. The wheat is of the macaroni variety, which grows well in these dry regions wherever irrigation is possible.

Speaking of the flour of the Sudan, I visited one of the largest milling establishments of the country during my stay in Omdurman. The owner is among the richest and most influential of the Sudanese. He is an emir, and as such is a leading citizen of the town. His mills were in a great mud-walled compound, which contained also his garden and home. The garden was irrigated by a well, and upon entering it 1 saw two black slave girls turning the wheels which furnished the water supply.

The mills were three in number. Each was in a mud stable-like one-story building just large enough to hold the millstones and the track for the animals which turned them. The stones were similar to the old-fashioned grinding machines of our own country. They rested one 198