Fatiguing Marches.

2 I I the leopards. The natives are of the Diaka race, but they have taken the name of the Kits, to distinguish them from the Dinkas who dAvell along the river. The Kits are occupied in agricultural and pastoral pursuits, while the inhabitants along the shore are fishers, who live exclusively on fish and the seeds of wild plants.

Among these Dinkas there exists a rivalry, the agriculturists considering the fishers their inferiors and subjecting them to a species of slavery. On this account those on the banks of the river have long been obliged to furnish the natives of the interior with fish and the flesh of the hippopotamus and crocodile, as well as the skins of the animals they have killed. The population of the Kits which, according to the data I have obtained, numbers about forty thousand souls, are, for the greater part, agricultural herdsmen. The lands sown are vast, which makes it probable that these inhabitants live in a certain affluence which we hardly meet with in other regions. Although the Egyptian Government has been established there for many jears, the roads are unsafe, and to cross the country one must have sufficient means of defence. I was obliged to remain three days in this village to procure other bearers. While I was preparing for m} departure, an official from the Mudirieh of Khol arrived with about seven or eight hundred bearers, who were going to Graba-Shambe. They were intended to transport the baggage and the material we had left behind us. From the leader of this troop I was able to obtain some information concerning the rising of Bahr-el-Ghazal, and the state of the roads ; the rebellion still continues and the roads are bad.

On September 1st we broke up the camp, and after two hours arrived on the banks of a river which only exists during the rainy season. It has a depth of about fourteen feet, and runs three miles p 2