PILE-DWELLINGS. 319 rock is generally whitish-grey or bluish in colour, and sometimes it shows broad stripes in white or dark grey. Petherick and Dr. Schweinfurth have already noticed these remnants of an ancient range of mountains. The steppe wood is mostly filled with high grass. On the whole, the ground is composed of that widespread red clay, covered with quartz rubble, which becomes more and more predominating as we proceed to the south. Here and there the upper stratum has been worn down into coarse sand, and towards Bufi yellow alluvial sand occurs with quartz fragments. In the depressions, however, a black layer of humus overlies the red clay, and forms in wet places muddy pools, which are the favourite haunts of elephants. On the other hand, in drier places it is -even now cracked and fissured in all directions.

The grass steppe, with its clumps of doléb palms, is succeeded beyond Khor Lomarié by a dense acacia bush, passing which we entered extensive fields of durrah and dokhn, interspersed by places where the bushes and high grass had been left standing in order to provide material for building purposes. Thousands of finches haunt these fields, and are a great plague. The havoc which weaver and widow birds (Hyphantornis, Kuplectes) are capable of perpetrating in maize and dokhn fields is absolutely astonishing. A covering of green leaves does not always suffice to protect the maize-cobs from their strong conical beaks. We reached the river shortly before midday. The path led so close along the edge of its yellow loamy bank, which is sixteen to twenty feet high, that if we dropped a paper it fell into the water. The latter was now of a yellowish colour, and appeared to be alive with fishes.

Here, at last, we were among the pile-dwellings. A platform, supported upon over three hundred stout piles, each one six feet high, stood within a broken-down bamboo fence. It hada length of ninety feet, a width of eighty feet, was made of timber and brushwood, and covered with clay and cow-dung, to form a level flooring. The ground-floor among the piles serves as a kitchen and storehouse; the water-jars and the murhakka (grindstone) are placed in it, and the servants sleep there. A square hole in the centre of the platform provides this lower room with light, and ladders lead through the hole to the platform. This