232 GONDOKORO TO AGARU.

district. Half an hour’s march over the well-made broad road, on red clay, which stuck fast to our feet, brought us to Loronio, a station near the hill of the same name.

Chief Latome’s village and hill lie in the centre of a slightly undulating plain, enclosed towards the north and north-east by the Lafit range. In all other directions, distant groups and ranges of hills were visible. The soil must be uncommonly fruitful, as it is capable of maintaining a considerable number of Negroes, I estimated that the men capable of bearing arms in Loronio were about a thousand; this may be accepted with slight modification, as the number of huts, which literally cover the hill, is quite astounding. Latome claims authority over thirteen other villages, many of which are larger than this. I say ‘“ claims,” because he does not, properly speaking, belong to the great hereditary chiefs of the land (at least so Chief Maye told me), but owes his great influence to his skill making rain, and in a measure also to his good government. In each of these villages Latome has huts and wives, whom it is the duty of their respective chiefs to support. He only visits the villages himself to collect tribute, which consists of corn, sesame, honey, leopard-skins, cattle, and ivory. If rain is needed in a village, a deputation must go to Loronio, and Latome, carried on a little ankareb, and accompanied by sundry porters carrying pots of mrissa (beer), repairs to the place and orders the rain. . The long high chain of the Lafit mountains, which name I may give to the whole range, to save confusion, is at most three hours’ march from here; it culminates in the two high peaks Lafit and Ittatok. The range has in different parts many different names; it runs in the direction of south-south-east to north-north-west. Towards Tarangole, which is situated, not in an easterly, but almost south-easterly direction from here, it forms, with other mountains, a sort of defile, from which rise here and there single peaks and hills, many of them crowned with perfectly flat plateaux, on which are situated large densely inhabited villages, Khor oz, the very type of a rain-torrent, flows across the plain from south-east to north-west. At this time it had already partially flooded the land, but in the dry season it does not contain a drop of water. Deep wells have therefore to be