At times it greatly amused me to entertain Dinka ladies of rank in my tent, in order to pay them the compliment of my admiration of their perfection in the arts of cookery. On my folding table I laid out for them some European dishes, and they sat on my chairs. I was astonished at the readiness with which they fell into our mode of serving, for they handled our spoons and forks as if they were perfectly accustomed to them; but they nearly always carefully washed everything they had used, and returned it to its place. In the interior of their dwellings, the Dinka are as clean as the Shillooks, sharing the same partiality for ashes as a bed. It ought to be mentioned that the traveller in this part of Africa is rarely troubled with vermin or fleas, which everywhere else, like desolation and slavery, seem invariably to have followed the track of Islam. In the Western Soudan the torments of the night are represented as insupportable, so that the huts of the Hottentots are not worse. Among the Dinka it is entirely different. The only disquietude to a stranger in their houses arises from the snakes, which rustle in the straw roofs, and disturb his rest. Snakes are the only creatures to which, either Dinka or Shillooks pay any sort of reverence. The Dinka call them their “brethren,” and look upon their slaughter as a crime. I was informed by witnesses which I had no cause to distrust, that the separate snakes are individually known to the householder, who calls them by name, and treats them as domestic animals. Their abundance here seemed to me very remarkable. Among the Bongo, on the other hand, I spent six months before I saw a single specimen, and it appears to be an established fact that, upon the whole, they are not generally common in Tropical Africa. Perhaps the species which is most frequent is the giant python (_Sebæ_). Those which inhabit the Dinka huts are, as far as I could learn, not venomous; and, as evidence that they are harmless, I cite the scientific names of the three species: _Psammophis punctatus_, _Ps. sibilans_, and _Ahaetuella irregularis_.