258 LABORE TO FATIKO.

Kuitu hills are overgrown with acacias, Balanites, and, unfortunately, with Randia also, and glossy thrushes (Lamprocolius chalcurus) were flitting over them in remarkable numbers. The weaver-birds, still moulting, were busily repairing their hanging nests, which shows that the rainy season has not yet set in here. The handsome Astur metabates is very common everywhere, and seems to take the place of its northern relative A. polyzonus. We descended by rather steep natural stairs to the river, which we reached exactly two hours thirty-four minutes after we had left Kérefi, as compared with two hours forty minutes last year. | Having been ferried across the river, which was already (May 26) swollen with rain that had fallen in the south, we soon reached Labore, and there ended our expedition, which I hope has not proved altogether fruitless in regard to the geography of this district.

4. From LABOrE vi4 FapIBEK TO Farfxo.* OPPOSITE LABORE—A MADI FUNERAL—CONFUSION IN THE GEOGRAPHICAL NOMENCLATURE—MADI VILLAGES—BARI DISTRICT—KHOR ATAPPI— THE HOT SPRINGS OF KHOR ASUA—A GREYISH-GREEN LANDSCAPE— ETHNOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE SHULI—FADIBEK—A LAND OF THORNS—SHULI HUTS—APICULTURE—CHIEF AKUOK—SHULI SMITHS— SHULI CUSTOMS—THE VIEW FROM JEBEL ABAYO—FRIEND ROCHAMA’S WELCOME.

THE ferry across the Nile near Labére lies about two-thirds of a mile above the station on the way to Khor Ayu. As the river there is scarcely more than 200 feet broad, it did not take us long to cross, and we landed a little farther to the * A letter forwarded with this paper to Herr Hansal, the Austro-Hungarian Consul at Kharttim, dated Waddelai, November 28, 1880, reads as follows :— ‘The notes contained in the enclosed pages were collected and compiled during a tour of inspection in the south ; their somewhat cursory form may perhaps be excused, on the ground that I had neither time nor inclination to round off and polish materials collected in the midst of grass and thorns. If, therefore, I venture to request that the notes may be kindly forwarded to the ‘‘ Royal and Imperial Geographical Society” in Vienna, to be used as thought best, it is because the