222 GONDOKORO TO AGARU.

with pieces of bones. The large root-stock of a plant, about twenty inches high, growing plentifully here, is dug up by the natives and used to impart a pleasant taste to drinking-water. It has greyish-green stiff leaves, which grow without a pedicel on the squarrose ramifications. The fruit 1s sweet, and in shape like olives. We found ripe yellow plums of the Spondia. We then entered fine park land, and soon heard the sound of running water from the Khor Gineti (Baker’s Kanieti), which flows northwards in foaming rapids. We had to pass its broad bed, in which were numerous piles of stones and very little water, and then we came to our first station in the Latuka country. It stands at a turn of the khor, and is entirely concealed in forest, so that it was not visible until we were close upon it. Okkela, or Wakkala, as the Danagla pronounce it, is occupied by only twenty men, and was erected last year after repeated requests from Chief Chulong, in order to protect him and his people from the attacks of the Ber, which recur periodically in the rainy season. The Khor Gineti, flowing close by, and having a floodmark on its deep bank of from four to seven feet above its present, and certainly lowest, level, often rises so much in a few hours that the ford is rendered impassable for days. Though containing little water, it flows throughout the whole year, which indicates the existence of springs, probably in the Obbo mountains. Its water is muddy, very likely owing to its loamy sides, and is not good, although some ten minutes above the station, at a bend of the hor, there are rapids, where the water roars and foams—a favourite haunt of Scopus wmbretta. To the north it loses itself in the broad swamps of the Ber country, enormous stretches of land extending, perhaps, to Bahr-el-Zaraf, and forming a refuge for numerous herds of elephants, which are only disturbed by hunters in the dry season.

The country here is richly wooded, and its stores of game are inexhaustible. Elephants, giraffes, buffaloes and zebras, wild boars, and thousands of antelopes, from the bulky Antilope oreas to the graceful A. Hemprichiana, disport themselves in the verdant clearings and open forest. No less than seventeen pitfalls have been made round the station, and prove very dangerous to the traveller.