Country South of the Sobat. 141 cattle of another individual or a village, or better still, of another tribe, and thus little raids of this kind are not infrequent.

" At Nerol another khor joins Khor Filus, by name Khor Nerol, or Chirol, which is said to connect with the village of Nyandeng, on the Sobat. Owing to lack of water, it was found impracticable to explore any distance up this khor."

Section 2. — The Country South of the Sobat and North of N. Lat. 5° between Bahr El Jebel AND Abyssinian Frontier.

(a) General Description.

The country included in the above limits comprises an area 300 miles by 200, which, except along its eastern, northern, and western margins, still remains practically virgin soil untrodden by a white man.

Our only direct information regarding the interior of this region is furnished by the Faivre Expedition (1898) which followed the course of the Pibor for about 60 miles above the Akobo junction, by the expedition (1902) TUE BAHR EL ZERAF, led by Major A. Blewitt, which marched nearly due south up the banks of the Khor Filus for about 70 miles, and by Lieutenant Comyn* who explored the so-called Pibor for 170 miles beyond the Akobo junction in September, 1904.

Except perhaps in the extreme south the whole of this area seems to be a flat alluvial grassy plain, during the rains, marshy and liable to be inundated by the various canal-like watercourses traversing it generally from south to north, but during the dry season probably arid and waterless for considerable stretches. In the south the forest is ])erhaps finer and more generally distributed than further north, where thin belts of the ubiquitous heghg, kittr, and talh occasionally vary the monotony of this vast grass-covered plain Though a flat and somewhat unattractive country to the explorer, there is more than one interesting problem awaiting solution, chief of which is the Pibor question.* The course of the mysterious Oquelokur which drains the northern slopes of the Latuka hills and the Kos, its supposed affluent after entering the Sudan, also awaits investigation. When Captain Borton visited the Beri at J. Lafol at the foot of which, according to existing maps, the Kos should flow, he could see or hear nothing of this stream. At Bor, too, nothing has been seen or heard of any large khor for at least 15 miles inland, though the * For precis of Lieut. Comyn's report on his exploration of this river south of the Akobo junction, vide p. 151.

U 2