388 GOSA TO WANDIL.

quartz stripes which I have so often mentioned before. Many swamps, overgrown with cutting grasses, made the march to the station of Embe, or Nembe, very unpleasant. There were extensive acacia groves in the neighbourhood of many of these swamps. lHlsewhere in Makraka the acacia is rather rare. Khor Embe has a breadth of about a hundred feet; the water is about forty inches deep and full of sunk stones. To the right and left of the ford it was covered with a broad growth of papyrus. From the large open space which lay before the huts of the station, I obtained a very good view over the mountainous country, with its many heights and peaks of which I had now to take leave; for the road slopes from here into the lowlands, and only once more, at the top of a high ridge of hills, was I able to catch a glimpse of the blue mountain peaks. The durrah-fields, through which we marched, were very extensive; one field joined another, occasionally intercepted by small zones of wood or by a strip of high steppe-grass, The only broad strip of savannah we passed forms the boundary between the Abukaya and the Makraka, whose district we again entered. For more than an hour we went through durrah-fields, till, after a long hot march, we arrived at the village of Baginmanya, where the chief received us hospitably. Our luggage had remained far behind, and only arrived about sunset, so that I could not think of work, and occupied the time by a stroll through the fields.

The road from here to Makraka-Sugaire is really only a path leading for three hours through fields of durrah, Hyptis, tobacco, sweet potatoes, and Colocasias. On account of the numerous zeribas surrounded by neatly kept fields, the neat huts, the trees hung with bundles of maize-cobs and other seeds, the many nets and lines for catching game, the numerous Tephrosia bushes for catching fish, this part of the country presents a very homely, hospitable appearance, which is borne out by the polite and friendly demeanour of its inhabitants. Close by the big Khor Torre, which we crossed in a boat made out of a gigantic trunk, lay the zeréba of Makraka-Sugaire, where we found the huts we had occupied two years before still standing. As at that time, the brillant sunbirds buzzed round the flowering citron and Papaw trees; as then,