Great Mortality through Famine. 401 fired a volley, and advanced to tlie attack. The Nuer took to flight, evidently believing that we had come in great numbers. We took from their huts a little grain, some tobacco and sutep and four small goats. When those on board saw our booty, they also landed and got some more sutep. But all together was scarcely sufficient for one day. I kept one goat and divided three among the men. I also kept a basket of doora for myself and servants.

We have reached the worst. I cannot remember anything like it in all my life. Scarcely does someone die than he is devoured during the night by the survivors. It is impossible to describe the horror of such scenes. One soldier devoured his own son.

The day after this, the cannibals died. It is noticeable that the Arabs were the first and the most numerous of those who devoured the flesh of the dead.

Of the one hundred and forty-nine Soudanese soldiers, except twelve whom I left in the slep and the nugger, only eight are alive, but they are in a desperate state. As to the women and children, I cannot at this moment give the exact number of dead, but I believe it is more than two hundred and seventy.

Four days ago I gave orders that all the tables should be broken up for firewood, that we might get out of this desperate situation. At night the steamer was hampered by two immense bars behind and before, and the river was at our right ; we should have been obliged to recede about seventy feet so as to turn our prow to the current, an operation that it was impossible to execute with so few people and the useless engines. I have