I arrived at Wadelai on October 1st, and found Lieut. Cape, R.A., in command; the boma is built on a small hill overlooking the miniature lake, and is slightly south of Emin’s old site. Here, as elsewhere, the drought had been very serious, and the country consequently looked bare and uninviting. After Rhodesia, B.C.A., and Northern Rhodesia, it was difficult to believe that this land of administrative chaos had been occupied for six years. The mail arrived three weeks overdue, and some loads which had or ought to have been already a month on the road, were three weeks afterwards still untraceable, although the whole distance is only a fortnight’s march, while station loads sent off yet three weeks earlier were still unheard of. Nowhere has the Government made any effort to introduce even bananas, much less fruit-trees, vegetables, wheat, or rice; no system of mail service has been organized, and no regulations as to import, duties, etc., had been issued. At Toro I asked for information about the transit dues, naturally objecting to pay the ordinary export duty of 15 per cent. on ivory which I had obtained outside the Protectorate. My request was ignored, and at Wadelai I was met by a demand for duties based on regulations apparently issued for our benefit, but by an error of judgment bearing a date subsequent to our crossing the frontier. From this I can only gather, either that the possibility of the country becoming a trade-route (one of the _raisons d’être_, I presume, of the railway) had never been entertained, or that it was part of the penny-wise, pound-foolish policy that robs officials of their hunting trophies, and maintains, at the preposterous figure of 14 rupees 8 annas a month, a large number of Waganda boatmen on the Nile, where they die like flies of dysentery brought on by unsuitable food. The country is quite unsuited to these Waganda, who are all banana-eaters, millet being the staple food; and this, coupled with the great difference in altitude, is killing them by dozens, while the banks of the Nile itself are lined with capable canoemen, who could be engaged at 3s. a month; 14 r. 8 a. a month to raw natives, many of whom are mere boys, is sufficient in itself to damn any country’s future which will be dependent on its agriculture. Where would B.C.A. be with wages for raw labour at £1 a month? It is an uphill fight now at 3s. rate; 8 r. a load from Kampala to Fajao, a fourteen days’ march, what produce will bear transport rates like this? Similarly the pay of the Soudanese is absurd; they actually do not know what to do with their money; and the only result of the late rise in their pay is that they no longer cultivate on their own account, but buy everything at exorbitant rates from the natives. They would have been equally contented and equally well off with half the sum, the effect of the other half being increased drunkenness and a general rise in the price of native produce. The