340 RUMBEK.

but living upon the produce of the chase, or at times working as smiths amongst the tribes just mentioned, whose villages and huts they are otherwise not allowed to enter. If their position is remarkable, their habits appear to be more so.

Scorpions and snakes living in dry places are larger and more poisonous than those found in moist depressions, with the single exception of the python. It is said that in the districts frequented by the Derr there exist exceedingly poisonous snakes of a reddish-brown colour, and about three feet in length, but the people know how to catch them. Having secured them by stratagem, they enclose a pool of water by a strong thorn fence, so arranged that the game coming to drink is obliged to pass through a narrow lane. The snakes, having had a hole bored through their tails, are fastened at the spot where the lane opens upon the water, and they not unnaturally bite the animals which attempt to pass. In this way two and three antelopes are caught in a day, the flesh being used as food by the hunters, and the skins employed to purchase wives.

The Agar are very superstitious. They not only believe in all sorts of evil spirits dwelling in the forest—good spirits are never believed in by a Negro—but they also look upon certain animals, such as the owl, the Galago, and especially the jackal, as harbingers of ill, who have to be carefully observed. One of the good qualities of the Agar, apart from their politeness and abstention from begging, is their cleanliness, which not only extends to their persons and food, but also to their villages ; for, in contradistinction to other Negro villages, all the lanes between their huts are clean and free from odours.