286 FATIKO TO FAUVERA.

Bananas are, of course, a very important means of subsistence, but the principal article of food in north Unyéro is the red-skinned sweet potato, which yields abundant crops at all seasons of the year. Besides the grains and fruits just enumerated, the usual vegetables are grown, such as gourds (Helmia bulbifera), two kinds of yams, and Colocasia. ‘There are also a number of wild herbs, which are eaten as vegetables, and remarkably good and prolific varieties of Phaseolus, so that vegetable food is very plentiful.

The supply of meat is not so satisfactory. Asarule cattle are rare, and can hardly be taken into account except for the chiefs. Goats and sheep (the latter very large, and having large fat tails) are plentiful; goat’s flesh, however, is here always better and fatter than mutton. Game can hardly be obtained during a large part of the year, owing to the high grass, but is eagerly hunted after the grass is burned down. Elephants are very numerous. As to domestic animals, there are large numbers of sporting dogs, of a good build, and generally of a brownish-yellow colour ; tamed wild cats are common, but the real house-cat, introduced from the north, is rare. owls are exceptionally numerous, but extremely small. Fishing is actively pursued in the river; the dried, sometimes huge, fish are seen hanging up in every hut, even inland at a great distance from the river.

We should have celebrated Id-el-Kebir, the great or sacrificial festival, here, but the road to Fatiko was long and rough, and, as I had to inspect the rapids near here, where a small station was to be established to secure the passage, we were obliged to leave Anfina’s sooner than he, and perhaps we ourselves, wished. Immediately after leaving Panyatoli, the descent to the river began. Well-tilled land, with numerous zertbas scattered over it, by which the neatly kept road passes, gradually gave place to woods containing beautiful tall trunks, and here and there to grass land, or, where depressions occurred, to reed thickets, as at the little Khor Nyambue. After a short journey of not quite four hours, we reached the river, where the bank, about eighty feet high, sloped steeply, and was composed of ferruginous red clay. The river, flowing in a loop from eastnorth-east to west-south-west, has at this place (Mutua, in the district Fodi) no rapids, and is only about five hundred feet