occupied one tent. In the daytime the "pium" flies, vicious little
sand-flies, became bad enough to make us finally use gloves and head-
nets. There were many heavy rains, which made the travelling hard for
the mules. The soil was more often clay than sand, and it was slippery
when wet. The weather was overcast, and there was usually no
oppressive heat even at noon. At intervals along the trail we came on
the staring skull and bleached skeleton of a mule or ox. Day after day
we rode forward across endless flats of grass and of low open scrubby
forest, the trees standing far apart and in most places being but
little higher than the head of a horseman. Some of them carried
blossoms, white, orange, yellow, pink; and there were many flowers,
the most beautiful being the morning-glories. Among the trees were
bastard rubber-trees, and dwarf palmetto; if the latter grew more than
a few feet high their tops were torn and dishevelled by the wind.
There was very little bird or mammal life; there were few long vistas,
for in most places it was not possible to see far among the gray,
gnarled trunks of the wind-beaten little trees. Yet the desolate
landscape had a certain charm of its own, although not a charm that
would be felt by any man who does not take pleasure in mere space, and
freedom and wildness, and in plains standing empty to the sun, the
wind, and the rain. The country bore some resemblance to the country
west of Redjaf on the White Nile, the home of the giant eland; only
here there was no big game, no chance of seeing the towering form of
the giraffe, the black bulk of elephant or buffalo, the herds of
straw-colored hartebeests, or the ghostly shimmer of the sun glinting
on the coats of roan and eland as they vanished silently in the gray
sea of withered scrub.

One feature in common with the African landscape was the abundance of
ant-hills, some as high as a man. They were red in the clay country,