BAOBAB TREES. 257 Defterdar Bey's cruelties, were made most neatly out of dollars slightly alloyed with copper ; and it was these fugitives who introduced among these tribes some culture, and civilisation, and also cotton and onions. Besides the Theresa dollars, one also meets here thalers of the Emperor Francis, which from the eagle, or rather from its feathers, are called Abu Risch, but these are not so well liked as the former.

In spite of the Haddenda hovering about the camp, we went to a gisser, an hour's journey south from here, to look at a Baobab. On a small hill, where a large ravine touches on the Gisser, there is one towards the south-south-east, and some others about the edge of the Grohr at the foot of the hills ; but neither here nor in Sabderath nor Gedehn, do they reach the size we had seen them elsewhere* in higher regions. We had never before heard that these gianttrees were to be found here, although my brother had often f-at under the shadow of a fallen one, of which the stem had a circumference of eighteen feet, and was thirty feet to the branches.

Its bark is like that of our birch ; outside it has a fine white rind peeling off in strips ; beneath this, the real nourishing brown bark, and below that the substance of the tree, fine nets of fibres, that lie on one another in lamina the thickness of a finger. The marrow-reed of it is very large, and when fresh and green makes a good salad. The stem suddenly ceases, and finishes off in small horizontal branches ; the fingerlike leaves are all small, and the crown poor compared to the stem. The bright green woolly fruit resembles longish gourds, the shell of which is easily broken, and the interior is filled with brownish beans, as hard as stones, which lie imbedded, without any regular order, in a white substance. This white substance melts in the mouth, and has a pleasant sourish taste. The fruit is more than a foot long, and half as thick. The older trees arc generally rotten at lieart, but, from their cork-like elasticity, not easily felled, and difficult to burn. From the fibres of the wood are made rahat, baskets, and ropes. Front the White Nile I brought with me a sample of these fibres prepared for use, which in fineness did not yield to the best flax, and in durability far exceeded it. The gazelles have incredibly inerc-ased ; on his return to the camp my brother shot throe, but the Otru (Antelope T 2