IRON-SMELTERS AT KISUGA. 25 of its elevated site is one of the best and healthiest which the Government possess here. The banana plantations far and near supply it with food. Unfortunately the want of rain this year has prevented all fruit from thriving. Red amaranthus and lovely grass lilies beautify the surroundings, winter crows (Corvus scapulatus) and small vultures sit on the trees waiting for food, while guinea-fowls and turtle doves approach quite close to the station.

Near the enclosure a smithy is erected, in which a native makes molut (shovels), and occasionally a spear-head or a knife, out of the iron smelted here. Two earthenware vessels, in form like flattened retorts open at the top, are covered with a piece of skin loosely stretched over them, in the middle of: which a hollow stick is fixed and made air-tight. These -arethe bellows; and the stream of air produced by the pulling up and pushing down of the stick is forced through a wide clay pipe into the fire made in a shallow hollow in the ground. A large lump of compact iron serves as an anvil. The iron that I saw was of very good quality.

Intercourse with the natives in all these newly established stations is naturally very limited, and therefore the collection of notes and information, as well as the observation of their customs, is hardly to be thought of. The language of these districts is Magtngo, which appears to be spoken also by the Umiro.

We had now only to visit Mrili, the most easterly station in the district at present occupied, and there our final preparations for a march into the interior were to be made. It may sound strange when I say “the interior,” for Mruli is situated in lat. 1° 37’ 43” N. Thanks to Gordon Pasha’s eminent talent of organisation; thanks to his three years’ really superhuman exertions and labours in a climate which very few have hitherto been able to withstand; thanks to his energy, which no hindrances were able to damp, the whole immense country from the gth to the 1st degree (Sobat to Mrili) is so well organised and so entirely secure that a single traveller can wander through the length and breadth of it with all the comfort that is here attainable, and can carry on his studies in peace. Arms and ammunition, except for pur-