The huts are built of bamboo and straw; the conical roof rests on a kind of basket-work of bamboo, which is daubed inside with clay, in a way that is imitated from the almost petrified erections of the white ants. The pagan negroes lavish far more care upon their huts than the Mohammedan inhabitants of the Soudan, who, although the bamboo grows so abundantly among them, do not succeed in giving their “tokkuls” nearly so much symmetry. Here they possess the art of erecting roofs which are perfectly water-tight, and which are so light that they do not require heavy posts to hold them together on the walls. The covering for the roof is formed, in the first place upon the ground, with handfuls of stalks laid side by side and knotted together. These are afterwards plaited into long strips, which are then laid one above the other, like the flounces of a lady’s dress—a comparison which is further the more appropriate, because the structure of the frame-work is exactly like a hooped petticoat. I would not allow the walls of the tokkul, in which I generally passed my time, to be cemented with clay, partly because I liked the airiness of the basket-work, and partly because light was necessary for my daily occupations. There seemed to me two other advantages—first, on dry days, my goods would more rapidly recover the effect of the wet to which they had been exposed; and, secondly, I should be less plagued with rats than those who occupied the plastered huts. In stormy weather, it is true, I had to suffer a certain amount of discomfort. To increase my storage-room I contrived some shelves and stands out of bamboo-canes; I had also brought from Khartoom some deal planks, expressly for the manufacture of the tables which were necessary for my botanical pursuits. A traveller who is in possession of bamboos, cow-hide, bladder, and clay, will find himself not very inadequately supplied with representatives of nearly all the building materials of Europe.