This tributary of the Dyoor was about as large as the Molmul near Aboo Guroon’s Seriba; its bed was between fifty and sixty feet wide; its banks were ten feet high. At present it was little more than a narrow ditch, with no perceptible motion in its waters, but I was told that lower down it widened out into pools that were always full of water. But insignificant as the Ghetty looked, it was large enough to be the resort of crocodiles so daring and voracious that they were the terror of the neighbourhood, the rapacity of the creatures very probably arising from a prevalent scarcity of fish. A few weeks previously, when the stream was full to the top of its banks, a Dyoor boy as he was swimming across had been snapped at by one of these ravenous Saurians and had never been seen again. It is surprising in the dry season, into what tiny pools and puddles the crocodile will make its way, and where, buried in the miry clay, it will find a sufficiently commodious home. In comparison with these pools the tanks with which the specimens in the aquariums of our zoological gardens are provided must be fully if not superfluously spacious. When kept in confinement the crocodile makes scarcely any perceptible growth; and from this circumstance of the slow increase of its bulk the inference seems necessarily to follow that the creature lives to a great age.

The Ghetty is bordered by bushes nearly identical with those which are found on the banks of all the streamlets of this land; the Morelia senegalensis, the Zizygium, and the Trichilia retusa may be noted as amongst the most common.

I was told that Bizelly’s head Seriba, known amongst the Bongo as Doggaya Onduppo, was situated upon the right bank, about eight leagues to the north-west of the spot where we crossed the stream, which here forms the boundary between the Wow tribe of the Dyoor and the district populated by the Bongo. We continued to advance for another league and a half, going up a densely-wooded acclivity until at length, fairly tired out with our exertions, we entered, quite late in the evening, Bizelly’s subsidiary Seriba, called by the Bongo Doggaya-morr.

PREDECESSORS ON THE SOIL.

Here, for the first time, I found myself on what my scientific predecessors had made what to my mind was nothing less than a classic soil. Here it was that Theodor von Heuglin had resided from the 17th of April, 1863, to the 4th of January, 1864; here, or at least in an adjacent village of the Wow tribe, had Dr. Steudner[65] expired; and close in the vicinity had Miss Tinné passed through a period of wretchedness which all her wealth was powerless to prevent. Never could I leave the Seriba without being conscious that every shrub and every plant was a memorial of those who had been before me, for all were representatives of that hitherto unknown flora of which Heuglin had collected the first botanical data, and which Dr. Kotschy has depicted in his noble work ‘Plantæ Tinnianæ,’ partly from the drawings of Miss Tinné herself.

Within the Seriba, too, I was constantly reminded of the miserable condition to which this expedition, so comprehensive in its original design, had been reduced. The region bore every token of having an unhealthy climate. The stagnant meadow-waters and foul streams all around had all the appearance of being veritable and prolific breeding-places for fever and malaria. A great ruined tenement, now a mere lodgment for sheep and goats, marked the spot where the remains of Miss Tinné’s mother, who fell a victim to the pernicious climate, were temporarily deposited until the opportunity came for them to be removed to her distant home. A dejected fate indeed, and a miserable resting-place for one who had been reared amidst the comforts and luxuries of the highest refinement.

Before leaving Bizelly’s Seriba we received intelligence of the murder of our old friend Shol, the wealthy Dinka princess, into the details of whose personal charms and associations I have, in an earlier page, entered with some minuteness. The natives, it seems, had accused her of inviting the “Turks” into the country; and as many of the tribes in the neighbourhood had been exposed to attacks from Kurshook Ali’s troops, they determined to avenge themselves on Shol, as being a long-standing ally of the Khartoomers. Knowing that she slept alone in her hut, a troop of men belonging to the Wady (a tribe settled to the east of the Meshera) set out by night, and under pretext of having business with Kurdyook, her husband, knocked at her door. She had no sooner appeared in answer to their summons than they attacked her with deadly blows; and setting fire to all the huts drove off nearly all the cattle that was to be found in the place. This melancholy piece of news, coupled with the recent defeat of the Khartoomers by the Niam-niam, foreboded ill for the future prospects of the Seribas; by Shol’s death the vicinity of the Meshera would lose all its peaceful character, and there was no longer the possibility of solitary boats being left there in security during the season of the rains.

LONGO.

A lovely march of about six miles to the north-west, through an almost unbroken and in many places very dense bush-forest, brought us to Ali Amoory’s[66] chief Seriba, distinguished by the natives by the name of Longo. The Parkia trees were just beginning to bloom. The wonderful spectacle that these presented was quite unique; their great trusses of bright red blossoms, large as the fist and smooth as velvet, made a display that was truly gorgeous, as they depended from the long stalks which broke forth from the feathery foliage of the spreading crowns.

Another characteristic of the scenery was the Boxia salicifolia, that appeared in great abundance.