62 UGANDA AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN.

things to be seen were the olive-coloured leaves of the fan-palms, and it was difficult to see how the cattle could possibly pick up enough to sustain life.

The heat, too, was intense, the thermometer standing at 110 Fahr. in the shade for several hours in the day, while the fierce glare from the bare soil, and the phantom waters of the mirage, sparkling in the sunlight and looking, only looking, so refreshing and cool, increased one's discomfort. This plain is evidently flooded during the rainy season, as all the tembes were built on artificial mounds or had banks round them to protect them from the water. At a village called Mbahi, about the middle of this plain, we got some fresh fish of the silurus genus, and on inquiring where they came from were informed that they were caught in a large piece of water at no great distance, but the natives would not tell us the exact locality of this lake. About Mbahi and the district of Unyamguira, two marches west of Mbahi, were a few dry watercourses, but they were so winding, and the altitudes of the different villages as shown by our aneriods varied so little, that it was impossible to say in which direction the country was drained.

On November 1st we crossed the bed of the Unyamgogo, and were not sorry to leave behind the yelling hordes of Wagogo adorned with red paint and redolent of rancid castor-oil. But before bidding a long farewell to this irritating people it may be