80 UGANDA AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN.

tive ; all the younger portion of the community dispensed with clothing altogether, and the married women contented themselves with a kilt of skin.

After crossing the Livumbu we entered a forest district, well watered, and with a few villages scattered about in clearings in the jungle. Three marches through this region brought us into the district of Usmao, a flat open table-land, well cultivated, and possessing large herds of cattle. The people seemed very warlike, and they need to be so, for they lived in constant dread of attacks by the Ruga Ruga of Mirambo, this renowned warrior and freebooter, whose capital was some 300 miles distant, having occasionally made raids into this country and carried off the cattle as spoil. Every one here went about well armed, the cattle were sent out to graze under a strong escort, the husbandman hoed up his fields with his spear stuck in the ground beside him, and even the women went in parties to draw water accompanied by armed warriors. Here is the northern limit in this part of Africa of the baobab (Adansonia digitata], and I did not meet with it again till north of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, in lat. 12 N. From this point the character of the country changed ; the forest disappeared, and it became more open, with broad grassy plains or valleys, separated from one another by low ridges, crowned with fantastic masses of igneous rocks, looking at