We now passed on through a country covered by farmsteads, repeatedly crossing fields of sorghum-stubble. The stalks, fifteen feet in length, which lay everywhere scattered on the ground, were a great impediment to our progress. The corn here cultivated is the largest form of the species; it takes nine months to ripen, and the stem in consequence becomes so hard and woody that it is no more like our European straw than their stubble-fields are like ours. At other places at this season the nature of the ground generally offered no hindrance, the clayey swamps being dry and hard as stone; the high grass of the steppe trodden down by men and cattle, the woods everywhere thin as in Southern Nubia, and consisting of isolated thickets or scattered trees of no great size. For the purpose of geographical investigation a journey in the rainy season would be more advantageous, because it is only then that the actual limit and importance of the periodical currents are to be estimated. The term _periodical_, however, so frequently used in connexion with the hydrographical conditions of Africa, perhaps hardly gives a correct impression, since the brooks and streams which more or less are dried up after the rainy seasons are over, still exercise their influence on the conformation of the land, just as truly, if not so obviously, as our perpetual rivers, which are permanently limited to their proper channels. Many of the rivulets in this extensive level have no apparent bed; for in proportion as the water decreases, the bed by degrees resumes its aspect of being covered with grass; the turf rapidly grows afresh as the water recedes, and, independently of this, much of it is able to endure a flood of several months without rotting or dying away. This is a circumstance which quite easily explains the misconceptions to which various travellers in the dry season have been liable, who have gone along without recognising any river-beds at all. It is not in any way surprising that they have crossed the beds of even considerable streams without perceiving in them anything different to ordinary undulations of the ground, for there is nothing to arrest the attention but the same uniform growth of grass, the same dry stubble, the same scorched, trampled stalks. Ten miles from the Meshera we reached the first watering-place in the centre of the Lao district, an open cultivated plain, several miles in extent, diversified with numerous farms and hamlets. Two fine sycamores seemed to beckon from afar and invite us to the spot. [Sidenote: HALT AT LAO.]