32 UGANDA AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN.

ready we started, accompanied for a short distance by Macliandi's wives and girls, wlio came to say good-bye to me. I found that there were no women in the caravan, and asked the reason ; on which I was tokl that they did not care to run the risk of their being captured by Kabrega, and as no women could now be sold as slaves at Mruli, it was no good taking them. This would seem to indicate that here at least the slave trade has been stopped.

From Kahiira, the land, which is rolling ground and covered by fine trees, giving it the appearance of a large park, forms a depression for about fourteen miles. The grass, which was much longer than it was when we passed over this country in the preceding February, was about three feet in height. There were evident traces that at some part of the year the ground was a swamp. "We camped that night on some high ground marked by five very tall Borassus palms, growing in order thus ° o ° , and this is the southern limit of this kind of palm. It was here that poor Maraku had been killed a short time previously. Marks of the fight still remained, and there were strewn about the place the ashes of the huts that had been burnt down.

There were a good many elephants about, whose trumpeting was a strange lullaby. During that night I saw a magnificent meteor, which seemed as large as a cricket-ball. It passed rapidly from west