sown with wheat, would feed only one man, will nourish five-and-twenty if planted with bananas. I must not forget the Pistachios,[103] which flourish spontaneously in the vast plains of Central Africa, and the highly valuable Sugar Cane (_Saccharum officinarum_), which, like the Cotton Plant, has rendered inestimable services to man, and yet has been the origin of unutterable crime and misery, promoting by its cultivation the accursed slave-trade. The Vine (_Vitis vinifera_) is cultivated in a few districts. Among the herbaceous or sub-frutescent plants peculiar to this region, and which enjoy a certain reputation on account of the utility of their products, I may name the following:-- The Calebash Nutmeg (_Monodora myristica_), one of the Annonaceæ, remarkable for its withered fruits, which, when rasped like its seeds, furnish a condiment deservedly esteemed by the natives; Guinea Pepper (_Uvaria Æthiopica_), whose properties are well known and appreciated in this part of Western Africa; and finally, one of the Cucurbitaceæ, the _Telfairia pedata_, whose seeds enclose a very oleaginous substance. To the east, in Nigritia or the Soudan, the country is nearly level, although situated at an elevation of 1200 to 1300 feet above the sea. The vegetation here is very scanty; yet the copious tropical rains favour the growth of plants suitable for the provender of cattle; pastures are abundant, and formed by the principal Grasses (Panicum Setaria, and the like), the Sedges, Rushes, &c. These meads are clothed with verdure for three or four months of the year, and much frequented by the shepherds who dwell in the vicinity of Lake Tchad. Still further eastward, if we continue our wanderings, we plunge into the warm regions of Darfour and Kordofan. Here the country is cast in bold outlines; numerous lofty mountain-chains are intersected by narrow valleys and smooth expanses of meadow-land. All that portion of Kordofan which lies west of the White Nile is a Prairie some thirty-five miles long by twenty-eight broad, stretching towards the rising sun, and relieved by small patches of shrubs of the family _Leguminosæ_, especially the Mimosa, with its graceful shrinking foliage, which shudders at the lightest touch, and its spherical rose-hued or snow-white blossoms.