THE LAKORTA TREE. 241 In a small opening before us were some fine trees, surrounded by young crops, which were divided into large squares by fences of brushwood and straw, as a protection from the water that rushes furiously down from the adjacent mountains. The very populous and independent district of Ikoto is characterised by excellent reddish soil; the numerous guard-huts in the fields were deserted, but here and there upon the mountains we saw small groups of people watching our march. A village “must once have stood near Khor Iffune, to judge from the patches of castor-oil plants, the luxuriant Solanacez, and the durrah which had run to waste. From the summit of an adjacent hill I obtained a view over the mountains of the northeastern Shuli district; Jebel Kuron, where a military post has just been erected, was certainly the grandest of them.

Leaving the Bayango range, we crossed the defile, and passing over hilly country bestrewn with rubble, we reached Jebel Khofir, a group of hills about three hundred to four hundred feet high, the spurs of which we had to mount after fording two small khors. Their stony declivities, strikingly whitish in colour, were covered at the top with thick brier brushwood, in which we noticed the dwarf tree, with reed-like leaves, called by the Shuli, Lakorta,* which we had seen last year near Chief Rochama’s village, Bidyo; it seems, indeed, to grow on all the mountains of eastern Lattuka.

From the heights of Jebel Khofir the lofty Irenga mountains came again into view. My guides pointed out to me the highest part, lying almost due east, as Jebel Zumo. Farther to the north, a very high and apparently solitary summit they named Jebel Baya, and a little to the south of it a large but very distant mass, situated in the district of Harogo, they called Jebel Toé. We descended from the spurs of Khofir into a caldron-shaped depression, where we rested a short time by some wells, and then followed the path to the hills which form a continuous barrier at the foot of the huge Jebel Seréten. The acacia copse through which we passed was at first very thick, but soon became more open, and Khor Koz, which hitherto had run at some distance from the road, approached very closely to _ * Dr. Emin Pasha calls this elsewhere “ Lakerda.’”’ See note on this name in the Index.—G. S, Q