feet), that they can live securely in the upper stories during the floods. The whole day we are beset by crowds of starving people, bringing small gourd-shells to receive the expected corn. The people of this tribe are mere apes, trusting entirely to the productions of nature for their subsistence; they will spend hours in digging out field-mice from their burrows, as we should for rabbits. They are the most pitiable set of savages that can be imagined; so emaciated, that they have no visible posteriors; they look as though they had been planed off, and their long thin legs and arms give them a peculiar gnat-like appearance. At night they crouch close to the fires, lying in the smoke to escape the clouds of mosquitoes. At this season the country is a vast swamp, the only dry spots being the white ant-hills; in such places the natives herd like wild animals, simply rubbing themselves with wood-ashes to keep out the cold. Jan. 20th.--The river from this spot turns sharp to the east, but an arm equally broad comes from S. 20 degrees E. to this point. There is no stream from this arm. The main stream runs round the angle with a rapid current of about two and a half miles per hour. The natives say that this arm of dead water extends for three or four days' sailing, and is then lost in the high reeds. My reis Diabb declares this to be a mere backwater, and that it is not connected with the main river by any positive channel. So miserable are the natives of the Kytch tribe, that they devour both skins and bones of all dead animals; the bones are pounded between stones, and when reduced to powder they are boiled to a kind of porridge; nothing is left even for a fly to feed upon, when an animal either dies a natural death, or is killed. I never pitied poor creatures more than these utterly destitute savages; their method of returning thanks is by holding your hand and affecting to spit upon it; which operation they do not actually perform, as I have seen stated in works upon the White Nile. Their domestic arrangements are peculiar. Polygamy is of course allowed, as in all other hot climates and savage countries; but when a man becomes too old to pay sufficient attention to his numerous young wives, the eldest son takes the place of his father and becomes his substitute. To every herd of cattle there is a sacred bull, which is supposed to exert an influence over the prosperity of the flocks; his horns are ornamented with tufts of feathers, and frequently with small bells, and he invariably leads the great herd to pasture. On starting in the early morning from the cattle kraal the natives address the bull, telling him "to watch over the herd; to keep the cows from straying; and to lead them to the sweetest pastures, so that they shall give abundance of milk," &c.