I was an object of the greatest curiosity, especially to the ladies of these communities, who came in large numbers to inspect me (front seats at bath time being in great request), and who, whether from a ridiculous sense of modesty or a laudable desire to do honour to the occasion, donned over and above the national costume of a small piece of string tied round the waist, a hopelessly inadequate apron of dried grass: a garment that, from the simplicity of its cut and the small quantity of material employed in its composition, I should have no hesitation in classing with the species of female extravagance known, I believe, to the fair sex as tailor-made. The men, who seem to be of a hopeful disposition, spend much time in making wicker baskets resembling two lobster-pots fastened together like a cottage loaf; these they leave in the river tied to sticks and without bait. I saw many hundreds of these, and large numbers of natives visiting them, but only one fish, though my olfactory sense warned me of the vicinity of at least one more. They have a pretty little myth about buying food from the Balegga for fish, and as they do not kill their goats and certainly had not been buying lately, I cannot imagine what they live on; but I do know that in six hours they removed every scrap of five large bull elephant, hides, bones, and all; a small trifle of about twenty tons; so conclude they live a kind of boa-constrictor’s existence. Many of the young men aggravate the natural ugliness of their faces by inserting pieces of glass about 5 in. long in their under-lip. One and all carry small bows, with reed arrows tipped with long thin spikes of iron neither barbed nor feathered. Most of the chiefs and elders are obviously of different race, some having the Galla features more or less pronounced. Here at the north end of the lake one emerges quite suddenly from the "Bantu" peoples to the Nilotic, and the line of division is wonderfully sharply defined. There are numbers of reedbuck and nsunu, and in the bush a small very red oribi of which I failed to procure a specimen. I also saw a herd of hartebeeste, and shot a cow; they closely resembled the Lichtenstein, though the rump was not so white, and the horns lie closer together and stand more erect than those of Lichtenstein. Mr. Cape tells me that Jackson’s hartebeeste, which it appears to resemble in other respects, is a considerably larger beast; so that it is to be hoped that he will be able to take a skull and hide home for identification. *CHAPTER XVIII.* *WADELAI TO KERO.*