170 TO THE LAND OF THE NEGROID jectionable, and inspires a certain resentment. I remember positively hating a vulture when I wakened one day, to find it soaring over me with mistaken impressions. And only an iimate courtesy once prevented my expression of a sense of bad taste, when a most hospitable old cannibal Nyamnyam lady, after cutting the throat of a fowl at her hut door as I entered, remarked on the satisfactory appearance of my figure as compared with that of my spare-built companion. It was flattering, but carnivorous ; moreover, 1 felt that no advantage lay in transmutation.

From Renk, which is 300 miles south of Khartoum, we plodded patiently up the White Nile toward the country of swamp and of negroid. Many lazy hours passed by until a slight rise in the bank appeared on the eastern side in the distance, with a grass-covered islet or two. The forest had retreated far back from the river, and was scarcely to be seen. Merely flats of dried swamp just occasionally rose above level, but stretched beyond vision. The prospect was not fair, and its loneliness forced itself on one. Far down the west bank a tiny protuberance rose as the steamer forced onward at its sure, sluggish pace. The beat of its paddles astern, carried over the water in regular cadence, warned the crocodiles at the edge of the stream, and sent small clouds of brown teal whistling onward. The " Father of Teeth " strolled about pensively, head cast down, deep in thought, and with long, grave, deliberate steps ; his hands were