at intervals like the gray ruins of ancient castles. Shooa is a land of milk and honey. The travellers found fowls, butter, and goats abundant and ridiculously cheap; and as beads were highly valued, they effected some good bargains. The women flocked to see the white lady, bringing her gifts of milk and flowers, and receiving beads and bracelets in return. They were gentle in manner, and evidently anxious to establish friendly relations. Sir Samuel was struck by the superior cultivation of the country. Large quantities of sesamum were grown and carefully harvested, the crop being collected in oblong frames about twenty feet long and twelve feet high. These were inclined at an angle of about 60°; the pods of the sesamum plants hanging on one facet, so that the frames resembled enormous brushes. When fully dried, the crop was removed to the granaries, of which there were two kinds: the wicker-work plastered over with cow-dung, supported on four posts, with a thatched roof; and a simpler contrivance, which may be thus described:—A stout pole, twenty feet long, was fixed upright in the earth, and, at about four foot from the ground, a bundle of strong and long reeds was tied tightly round it. Round these reeds, at intervals, were fastened hoop of wicker-work, until the structure assumed the shape of an inverted umbrella half expanded. When this is filled with grain, fresh reeds are added, until the work has extended to within a few feet of the top of the pole. The whole is then crowned with a covering of reeds, securely strapped, and resembles nothing in the world so much as one of those cigars which slightly bulge in the middle. At Shooa all Sir Samuel’s Obbo porters absconded, being afraid to enter Kamrasi’s country, and he found so much difficulty in supplying their places, that he resolved on leaving behind him every article that was not absolutely indispensable. How different an appearance his expedition presented to that which it had worn on leaving Khartûm! It was shorn of all its “pride and circumstance;” but its leader remained as resolute and as hopeful as ever, and started from Shooa on the 18th of January, determined to press forward to the Luta N’zige. After passing Fatiko, a village perched like an eagle’s eyrie on a rocky table-land, he entered upon a sea of prairies, an immense undulating expanse of verdure, dotted with a few palms. As his guide lost the road, Sir Samuel proposed to clear the country to the south by firing the prairies, and a strangely picturesque spectacle was the result. In a few minutes the flames roared before them, and waves upon waves of fire, and clouds upon clouds of smoke, rolled away to the far horizon. Flocks of buzzards and swarms of beautiful fly-catchers thronged to the spot, to prey upon the innumerable insects that endeavoured to escape from the approaching conflagration, which continued to extend until arrested by a reedy swamp.