230 WHERE LIVES PRIMITIVE MAN of the observer. Two pythons killed at Mongalla by a friend were 20 feet long.

This was not the only despitefulness exhibited by the gods of this district. The most interesting and saddening fact revealed itself, that not half an hour before our arrival, perhaps scared away by our noise, the whole river -bank had swarmed with elephants. Their dung was still steaming and their spoor covered acres, while the fresh-broken trees evidenced their destructiveness over a large area. One cannot resist the impression that great numbers of elephants still exist in the Sudan, unless their extreme mobility conduce to an exaggerated appearance of numbers. Who can wish this condition to alter ? and who can repress feelings of indignation that slackness of rule, resulting from loss of interest on the part of the Congo State, should have permitted the wholesale destruction of these noble beasts in the Lado Enclave near the termination of the Belgian occupation ?

The charm of travel through this country is to see its wild creatures wandering at will, untrammelled by fences, bars, limits, or keepers, over vast tracts of grassland or through the dense forest. Even as our steamer gyrated in the morning in our efforts to effect a landing, a great, tawny giraffe stopped in his lurching walk, and, turning his " Eiffel Tower " of a neck in our direction, calmly surveyed the whirligig beast on the river.

The slow steadiness of the progress of these animals across the plains, prominent as they are