8o Seven Years in the Soudan.

establishment of friendly relations witli this powerful Sultan was, in fact, an excellent step towards furthering the development of commerce. Mtesa had already commercial relations with Zanzibar. To traverse the country between the coast and Uganda three months were necessary, while Gondokoro was not more than twenty days' distance from the state of Mtesa. Ivory and coffee are abundant there ; the country fertile, and rich in every kind of product. The inhabitants of Uganda are much more civilized than those between the eleventh degree of latitude and the Equator. None of them go naked, and those Avho are not clothed decently are punished. Their clothing consists of a kind of sheet, which they drape gracefully around their persons, so that it seems divided into different parts. The material of this kind of toga is made of the bark of a plant ; it is of a yellowish colour, and is so well prepared as to have all the pliability of a European tissue. I have been told that each dress is made ox a single piece of bark, in which case the trees must be of an extraordinary size. I was able to procure one of them, which was about five yards long, and two wide.

The engineer Kempt had, meanwhile, left us for Dufile (situated beyond the last cataract), to put to-2:ether a little steamboat left at Gondokoro bv Sir Samuel Baker, which, in consequence of the hostility of the natives, he had not been able to have transported. This boat, constructed in England, could be taken to pieces, and, once launched at Dufile, would furnish the means of navigating the Albert Lake, and making the tour of it to ascertain which was the principal tributary of this vast extent of water. Two thousand natives and two hundred soldiers were sent as escort.