Flowing without intermission, all through the year, close by Dugguddoo, there is a brook which the Bongo have named the Tomburoo. Its water hurries on at the rate of 170 feet per minute, its depth hardly ever exceeds three feet, while its breadth varies from 20 feet to 50. Its banks, about four feet high, were bounded by land subject to inundations corresponding to the measurement of the stream. At a league’s distance to the east, the general elevation of the soil began afresh. The environs of the Seriba of Shereefee were only scantily cultivated, as the Nubians and the Bongo lived by preference on the produce of the plundering forages which they were accustomed to make amongst the adjacent Dinka tribes, the Ayell and the Faryahl, towards the north. Exposing itself far and wide, there was the naked rock, the barrenness of which was only interrupted at intervals by a scanty covering of human bones! Carried off in groups, the captured slaves here succumbed to the overwrought exertions of their march. At times they died literally of starvation, as often there was no corn to be had in the barren land. The overland dealers in slaves make their purchases here at the most advantageous prices. In these eastern Seribas, as the result of the perpetual raids upon the Dinka, there is always a superabundance of the living black merchandise on hand, but very rarely is there an adequate supply of food for their maintenance. The traders proceed from Seriba to Seriba with their gangs, which they maintain on whatever provisions they can get on the way. Where destitution is an ordinary phase of things, it is self-evident that the traffickers, having no resources to support a lengthened journey, must, day after day, suffer considerable loss, and it is no unwonted thing for their gangs to melt away by a dozen at a time. Burnt bones of men and charred palisades of huts are too true an evidence of the halting-places of Mohammedanism, and, day by day, more and more was my imagination shocked by these horrid spectacles. In the very Seriba there was even awaiting me afresh the miserable sight, to which no force of habit could accustom me, of a number of helpless children, perfect little pictures of distress and wretchedness, either orphans or deserted by their mothers, and who dragged on a pitiable existence, half-starved, burnt by falling into the fire in their sleep, or covered with loathsome sores. [Sidenote: LAND-SNAILS.]