214 Seven Years in the Sondan.

the doora, a little sesame, a quality of peas called ful, and sugar-canes, tliere is nothing. In the gardens ■\ve find some imported trees, oranges and lemons, some bananas and a tree which yields an exquisite fruit called by the Arabs Gista. In the woods are found the caoutchouc tree, but hitherto no one has thought of extracting its precious milk, so appreciated in Europe for the manufacture of a thousand articles. The soil is sandy, and, I believe, little adapted to the production of other plants. Manufactures are entirely wanting, and the population, women as well as men, go completely naked, -the Avomen only sometimes covering themselves with a leaf in the front and at the back.

At Rumbck one finds various specimens of different types assembled ; indeed almost all the tribes of Bahr-el-Ghazal, the Jurs, the Macracas, the Gurguros, and the Xiam-Xiams, are represented there. The women of Jur are very tall in stature and large in size. They are distinguished by the mutilation they make of the lower lip to introduce a button made of the peel of gourds, which renders the lip protuberant, so that these women, who have good features, are horribly disfigured.

To-day arrived a courier from Shambe, bringing the news that the waters have risen, and that the steamer iScehhiii on its way to Khartoum has been obliged to go back, having found the river barred by grasses andpapyrus ; thenavigation therefore remains interrupted. If this is true, who knows when I shall have the satisfaction of getting news of my family and friends ? No other resource remains to me but to send ni} letters by way of Meshra-el-Rek to Bahr-el-Ghazal, but I cannot adopt this course until I have asked that a steamer may be sent to me by way of Kordofan.