On account of the shallowness of the water on the side on which the town is built, the boat was moored close by a narrow island which was connected with the mainland by a kind of jetty composed of faggots. This at the time of high water serves as a mole for any boats that may arrive, which are then able to lie close alongside the doors. Before the walls of the town, on a terrace left dry by the sunken flood, extend fields and vegetable gardens, which the Governor, following the Egyptian fashion, has caused to be planted.[10] This is the southern limit of the wheat culture in the Eastern Soudan. The neighbouring country consists of steppes, over which, as far as the eye can see, larger and smaller groups of Shillook huts rise from the grass. The demand of wood for the use of the troops has caused the larger trees everywhere to be miserably mutilated, and the few boats which are at the disposal of the Government have enough to do in procuring fuel for the heating of the steamer stationed there. Every branch as it grows is immediately cut off, and the naked stems of the acacias, once so magnificent on account of their massive proportions, are alone able to defy the meagre tools Fashoda can supply. [Illustration: View of Fashoda.] For three years, it is said, there has been an undisturbed peace here, that is to say, in the environs of Fashoda; up to that time, outbreaks more or less violent, on the part of the negro settlers, had been the order of the day. Near a withered Adansonia, less than a mile from the walls, the spot was pointed out to me where the cannon of the fortress was for the last time called into action. A well-directed shot had mown down fifteen men at once from a single party who were taking advantage of the rainy season and the high grass to make an attack. The fatal shot was decisive, and the attack was abandoned. From among the bones of the Shillooks killed on that day I selected from a neighbouring pit nine skulls in good preservation, the investigation of which has furnished some material evidence towards the ethnography of Africa. [Sidenote: TENT ON THE BANK.]