450 LETTERS TO DR. SCHWEINFURTH.

streams—and there were only too many of these—before we could cross them. You would have been delighted to see the Governor of the province working in the deep water, axe in hand. The Monbuttu are poor hunters, and swimmers are very rarely found among them.

Shortly before reaching Bellima, I received letters which upset all my plans and obliged me to make a forced march northwards to this place instead of going eastwards. The Dinka had surprised Rumbek during profound peace, put all the garrison and inhabitants to sword, and carried off weapons, ammunition, stores, &c. I am quite at a loss to understand how this happened, and how the people could have acted thus without any incentive—but that is just it! What can the incentive have been? I had sent off sufficient reinforcements to Ayak and Rumbek since the Dinka on the Bahr-el-Ghazal had become refractory, so that I have nothing to reproach myself with. However, I at once forwarded a detachment to march from Gambari’s past Gango to Légo, and bring the men assembled there to Makraka. I resolved to make for Makraka myself by the shortest way, to send forward reinforcements from there, and, when the greater part of the men from Logo had arrived, to go north with them.

We followed the old road from Gambari’s residence to Mbaga’s village, Negunda, and then, after a good march of about seven hours, reached the Kibali, which we crossed immediately. The Dongu flows into it just at this place, and a hypsometrical observation gave the height as 2171 feet, which agrees pretty well with the altitudes obtained of the stations Munda and Dongu, and of this village (Bongeré’s). Immediately after leaving the river, we entered the boundless steppe; there were tall, sharp grasses, marshy pools, genuine papyrus swamps, and very scanty woods. We wandered for two whole days in this chaos of grass, making a road for ourselves, for there was no path most of the way, and you know what that work is. The guides we had taken with us proved incompetent from the first, and so we had only the compass to depend on. We passed some Zandé dwellings, standing by brooks amidst the woods which line both banks, but they were deserted, so that we could gain no information about the way.