108 UGANDA AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN for the night. No one is allowed to leave the camp for any purpose without taking with him a firebrand. This precaution is to prevent thieves or enemies coming unawares to the camp. Any one lurking round the lines without a torch is immediately shot.

It is a strange sight to walk round such a camp, the men reposing in all attitudes, eating, smoking, and singing; the women attending to the fires, grinding their corn or baking their cakes, the whole scene being illuminated by the cheery glow of the wood fires. After the cooking and eating are over, dancing often begins, and men and women thus beguile the hours of darkness, sleeping for only two or three hours before the next march begins. How it is possible for them to exist with this small amount of rest I cannot understand. The sentries are all numbered, and call out their numbers in order every few minutes ; the under officer in charge of the watch, on hearing the last number called, shouts " tamman " (correct), and the round begins again. Should a sentry miss his turn the round is stopped, and woe betide the man who sleeps at his post. Fifteen or twenty cuts with a kurbatch wake him efi'ectually ; and that he will not close an eye again that night may be taken for granted.

In the Equatorial and Bahr-el-Grhazel Provinces the postal arrangements are very good; there is a