Quite incredible is it what the Bongo are able to digest. Most of the bulbs and tubers are so extremely bitter that it is not until they have been thoroughly steeped in boiling water or have had their pungent matter mollified by being roasted at a fire, that they can be eaten at all; they are gall to the taste. Amongst these bitter bulbs there are two which may claim a special notice; these are the Mandibo and the Moddobehee. The Mandibo is a species of Coccinea, which is nearly everywhere very abundant; the Moddobehee (dog’s gum) is one of the Eureiandræ; they are both Cucurbitaceæ, and both contain poisonous matter. Impregnated with the like bitterness are the rape-like roots of the Asclepiadeæ, the huge tubers of the _Entada Wahlbergii_, and of the Pachyrrhizus; so also are the various kinds of Vernoniæ and Flemingiæ, which are dug up from a foot below the surface of the soil. The natives can make but little use of the plants which grow from any of these numerous tubers. The diminutive Drimia lifts its pretty red blossoms about a couple of inches above the rocky ground, and is a bulbous plant which becomes edible after a prolonged boiling. Whenever a halt is made upon the marches across the wilderness, the bearers, as soon as they are liberated from their burdens, set very vigorously to work and grub up all sorts of roots from the nearest thickets. I can myself vouch for a fact, which might fairly be deemed incredible, that thirty Bongo who accompanied me on my return to Sabby, at a time when I had scarcely enough to keep me from starvation, subsisted for six consecutive days entirely on these roots, and although we were hurrying on by forced marches, they lost neither their strength nor their spirits. Their constitution was radically sound, and they seemed formed to defy the treatment of their inhospitable home. Already it has been mentioned that there is an entire deficiency of common salt throughout the district of the Gazelle. The alkali that is everywhere its substitute is obtained by soaking the ashes of the burnt wood of the _Grewia mollis_, a shrub common throughout Bongoland, and which is notoriously useful in another way by the quantity of bast which it produces. [Sidenote: SMOKING AMONG THE BONGO.]