350 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

Angelo Vinco, Dr. Knoblecher's companion, whom, on account of his spectacles and gray heard, he took to he a magician.

He begged the Padre to grant him four favors, viz : — abundance of children ; the death of the enemy who had slain his father ; victory in all his fights, and a cure for the wound in his head. The latter gift was easily bestowed, by means of a plaster, but he was not satisfied until an image of the Virgin had been hung around his neck.

South of the Kyks dwell the Elliabs, who are less timid than the southern tribes, because they come less frequently into contact with the traders. In their country the White Nile divides into two branches, and here the expedition separated, each division taking a different channel. The water was so low that the vessels stuck fast in the mud, but were relieved by the friendly natives, who dragged them through the shallows by means of long tow-ropes. For this service they were paid in glass beads. The further the vessels went into regions where intercourse with the Egyptian traders is rare, and therefore fewer outrages are perpetrated, the more friendly, confiding <and unconcerned was the behavior of the natives.

On the thirty-first of December the expedition reached the country of the Zhirs. The people came down to the water's ■jdge to greet them, the women clapping their hands and singuig a song of welcome. On the second of January, 1850, Dr.

Knoblecher saw in the south-east the granite mountain of Nierkanyi, which lies in the Bari country, in about the fifth degree of north latitude. It was the first elevation he had seen since leaving Djebel Defafangh, in the country of the Dinkas, in lat. 10° 35;. All the intervening space is a vast savannah, interspersed with reedy swamps of stagnant water.