436 THE SUDAN AND EQUATORIAL PROVINCE.

the purpose of having the steamers coming from the Bahr-el-Ghazal and Bahr-el-Jebel searched for slaves. ‘This station originally belonged to the Hquatorial province, but it was subsequently placed in the mudirié of Fashoda; the people, however, from Fashoda had only used the station in order to make razzias into the country entrusted to my care; therefore, as my complaints had not been heeded, and the station had also been evacuated at the beginning of the present difficulties, I had requested the Governor-General to make the station over to me again, and he had granted my request. The reason I asked for it back was that I wished, by reoccupying the Sobat, and by erecting two or three small stations between it and my station at Bor, to establish a post-road, which would enable me to be independent of the arrival or non-arrival of steamers from Khartum, and which I might also use, in case of blocks in the Nile, to send my correspondence safely and expeditiously to Khartum. After arriving at the Sobat, where some two thousand Shiluk assembled to meet us, I was able to make the necessary arrangements with their chiefs. The three days that we remained there cutting wood were passed on the best of terms with the natives, who brought very large quantities of provisions for sale, such as flour, durrah, fowls, and fish, as also straw mats; iron and tobacco were the articles most sought for in exchange. From the Sobat to the station of Shambe, a distance of about a hundred hours’ steaming, we had to pass through a monotonous, depressing stretch of swamp. Broad lake-like expanses of water, large swampy reed islands, tufts of papyrus, groves of ambaj, and more rarely small strips of firm ground, alternated constantly with each other, and only very seldom could a solitary tree be seen. There was, however, no lack of material for the observer, for hosts of various kinds of Diptera would have gladdened the heart of any entomologist, and there were millions of bloodthirsty mosquitos, against which it was almost impossible to protect oneself. Any one without sufficient interest in entomology to sacrifice his blood to the cause, would wish, as I did, to be again on land. The small station of Shambe, which we reached after more than four days’ steaming, affords the traveller a very desirable rest. This station is really nothing but a wooding-place, and is only