BANKS OF THE WHITE NILE. 369 The White Nile, which is here three miles broad, was as smooth as glass, and glimmered far and bright under the moon.

The shores were still, in all their dead level expanse, and had it not been for the uneven line which their belts of thorn-trees drew along the horizon, I could have imagined that we were floating in mid-ocean. While the men halted for breakfast the next morning, I landed and walked ahead, hoping to shoot a wild duck with my pistol. Notwithstanding there were hundreds along the shore, I found it impossible to get within shooting distance, as they invariably made into the river on my approach. An attempt to gain something by running suddenly towards them, terminated in my sticking fast in the mud and losing my red slippers. I then crept through the scattering wood of mimosas to get a chance at a pigeon, but some spirit of mistrust had taken possession of the birds, and as long as I had a shot left there were none within reach. When my two barrels were spent they sat on every side in the most familiar proximity.

Notwithstanding there were very few villages on the river's bank, the country was thickly inhabited. The people prefer building their dwellings a mile inland, and going to the river for water. This custom probably originated in their fear of the Shillooks, which led them to place their dwellings in situations most easy of defence. At one of the fording-places I found a number of women and children filling the water-skins and lifting them upon the backs of donkeys. Many hundreds of the hump-backed cattle, peculiar to the country, were collected along the shore. They have straight backs behind the hump, (which is a projection above the shoulders, four to six inches high), clean flanks, large, powerful necks, and short, straight 16*