mere skeletons, and the entire tribe appears thoroughly starved. The
language is that of the Dinka. The chief carried a curious tobacco-box,
an iron spike about two feet long, with a hollow socket, bound with
iguana-skin; this served for either tobacco-box, club, or dagger.
Throughout the whole of this marshy country it is curious to observe the
number of white ant-hills standing above the water in the marshes: these
Babel towers save their inmates from the deluge; working during the dry
season, the white ants carry their hills to so great a height (about ten
feet), that they can live securely in the upper stories during the
floods. The whole day we are beset by crowds of starving people,
bringing small gourd-shells to receive the expected corn. The people of
this tribe are mere apes, trusting entirely to the productions of nature
for their subsistence; they will spend hours in digging out field-mice
from their burrows, as we should for rabbits. They are the most pitiable
set of savages that can be imagined; so emaciated, that they have no
visible posteriors; they look as though they had been planed off, and
their long thin legs and arms give them a peculiar gnat-like appearance.
At night they crouch close to the fires, lying in the smoke to escape
the clouds of mosquitoes. At this season the country is a vast swamp,
the only dry spots being the white ant-hills; in such places the natives
herd like wild animals, simply rubbing themselves with wood-ashes to
keep out the cold.

Jan. 20th.--The river from this spot turns sharp to the east, but an
arm equally broad comes from S. 20 degrees E. to this point. There is no
stream from this arm. The main stream runs round the angle with a rapid
current of about two and a half miles per hour. The natives say that
this arm of dead water extends for three or four days' sailing, and is
then lost in the high reeds. My reis Diabb declares this to be a mere
backwater, and that it is not connected with the main river by any