BELINIAN. 215 now the post is garrisoned by twenty soldiers, and that the chief, Loron, Baker’s antagonist, has become one of our most trusted adherents.

A large sandy plain, with doléb bushes and briars, intersected by several small khors, extends from Gondokéro to the imposing mountains of Belinian (Belingong), which flank the road to Chief Befo’s village, Urbare. Numerous Calotropis grow here, as they always do in this kind of soil. Forest trees, magnificent tamarinds, butter-trees, and acacias, just beginning to shoot forth their fragrant blossoms, grow in oreater number near the mountains, where the land also is greener, owing to the damp soil. Beautiful green meadows, on which large herds of cattle graze, attended by flocks of | snowy-white herons (Bubulcus ibis), gradually encroach on the yellowish-red tracts of sand. Numerous small zeribas, enclosed by strong thorn-hedges, and industrious people preparing the land for seed, and followed by dogs with bells round their necks, lent to the village of Urbare a cheerful, homely aspect. About five minutes north-east from this place we came across the bed of the large Khor Kadwe, known farther down as Khor Kirmion (the Bari have a nasal “n” exactly like the French), which is the principal channel of drainage for this part of the country. There is plenty of good water in certain parts of its bed, which is deeply excavated, and is bordered on either side by broad banks of coarse sand, with numerous fragments of quartz and still more numerous mica scales. Hundreds of storks were assembled in the adjoining fields, but would allow no one to approach them; the tufted Scopus wmbretta, not nearly so shy, stood nodding and fishing in the shallows.

Chief Befo, after “scaring away the rain,” became our guide through his country, which extends nominally from the Belinian chain to Tollogo. Hills of hard yellow ferruginous clay, bestrewn with quantities of quartz rubble and overgrown with thin brushwood, marked the first slight ascent to the Lokoya group; our next destination. On our march we crossed Khor Kadwe and Khor Kasuba, the former a broad stream but quite dry, the latter gay with vegetation, and containing water which smells badly and tastes slightly of iron. Large blocks of