88 UGANDA AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN.

raent I made, and every feature and article of my dress. At night a violent storm came on, and the roof of the hut being anything but watertight, the rain came through upon me, and this combined with the presence of a colony of rats, which kept racing over me as I lay in bed, completely drove away sleep. The next day I went over to Bukindo, the capital of the island, which is a large straggling village with a number of irregular streets. Each hut stands in a small plot of ground where maize, millet, pumpkins, tobacco and other plants are grown. The town has a ringfence all round it, access being had through gates, which are closed by ponderous slabs of wood suspended from a bar, and which are so heavy that it requires two men to open them ; and for this reason they are usually propped up during the day, but let down at night, when they are further secured by a transverse bar passed through holes in the gateposts. In the centre of the town is a large enclosure (formed by a high palisade of whole trees) where the king lives : it contains the huts of his wives, who number about thirty, the hut where the royal drums are kept, and a large number of storehouses for grain : these latter consist of large cylindrical baskets plastered with clay and raised above the ground on poles, and covered with a thatched roof.

The king's enclosure has a gateway similar to those which give access to the town, and just outside is