Bold; Makaraka. 129 In the town the disorder, filth, and stench are beyond description.

The river here is about 50 yards wide and 15 feet deep, with a current of one knot per hour.

The main road branches off from Dufalla towards the Bahr el Jebel, and passes at first through the country of the Agar. Here there are neither woods nor meadows, but an open cultivated district with cornfields. It is most thickly populated, though the inhabitants do not live collected in hamlets, but in detached palisaded huts about the fields.

ttumbek used to be the seat of the Mudir of the province ; to the west the country is, as usual, inhabited by numerous small tribes or clans, and in many parts is covered with wood and tall grass ; elsewhere it is monotonous and flat, with a few isolated hills. Rumbek is a very large place, with an Arab population of some 3,000, and about 30,000 natives in the surrounding villages. The streets are narrow and tortuous : the town was once fortified, but the earthworks are now in ruins.

It was described by Junker (1877) as a dirty, crowded town of houses built on posts. Founded by Alfonse de Malzac (a notorious merchant or slave-trader) in 1858.

There used to be large gardens round the zeriba, and quantities of vegetables and fruit could be obtained.

At the Zeriba Dyoht the mudirieh of Bahr el Ghazal used to commence.

(d) Makaraka (Mudirieh).

The Makaraka people inhabit but a small part of the former mudirieh of the same name, but custom gave the name to the whole, from the fact that the Government found the Makaraka much the most trustworthy of the tribes, and employed them, accordingly, as porters and in other employment.

There are a number of other tribes who have been for inhabitants, much longer residents in the country, and are indigenous to the soil, distinguishable in manners and language, and apparently the remnants of more powerful negro tribes, who are now to a great extent amalgamated and scattered in groups over the land. Such are the Liggi, Fadyellu, (386) k