40 MRULI TO RUBAGA IN UGANDA.

cloth, and here and there a draceena. As soon as the fig-trees are stripped, they are wrapped round with a sheath of banana leaves, in order to preserve them from insects, and to promote the process of regrowth in the bark, which takes place by means of the bundles of fibres that run out from the remaining bark above and below. The bark may be employed for this purpose until the tree is two and a half to three years old, but as a rule the same tree is only stripped twice. The first time it produces a thick coarse cloth, the second time a uniformly finer one. White-flowering, rose-tinted tobacco (Nicotiana virgimana) is universally cultivated near the houses. Its lightereen leaves are a span long, of a sharp, aromatic odour, and the entire shrub grows to a height of about three feet. Special stands of about a foot high, made of dry wood, are erected for the gourd tendrils. White and yellow flowering species are very plentiful, and the fruit is used for eating, and for an innumerable variety of vessels, the leaves being eaten as a vegetable. Spoons are cut out of the rind of the fruit. Late in the evening I received a visit from a lady. She was still a young woman, with stolid, expressionless face, but remarkably beautiful small feet and hands. She was attired in coloured goat-skins, richly decorated with small stones, _ horns, and cowrie shells, and arrived playing on a small gourd containing many holes. She belongs to a class of homeless wanderers—gipsies, I may call them—who are constantly met with throughout Unydéro and Uganda, and who appear to be the remainder of a distinct tribe. They resemble gipsies in the vagabond life they lead, in their practice of sooth-saying, and in the manufacture of all kinds of amulets and charms, as algo in their love for music.

When we continued our way next morning, the dew-besprinkled banana groves shone beneath a brilliant blue expanse of sky. There is really something very fascinating on a morning like this amidst such surroundings. Mréko, who had probably not got up enough “steam,” had remained behind, and so we were soon obliged to halt amongst huts and banana groves to wait for him. The place is named Duéro, and its neat huts, often with projecting tripartite gables, nestle in the midst of extensive plantations. The red durrah