308 THROUGH UNKNOWN AFRICAN COUNTRIES. 
have a remarkably sleek and well-fed appearance, owning 
many sheep and goats, and raising enormous quantities 
of durrha. 
“ They vary their diet also by catching catfish in hand-nets 
fastened to a pole with a hoop at the end. Five large 
villages belonging to these people were passed before we 
came to the Buki, a tribe five miles north of last night’s camp. 
The Buki are an offshoot of the Kére, and only number 
about six hundred individuals. Here we rested for about 
an hour under a large tree called ‘hammer’ in Somali, 
while I took tiffin and made some observations with my 
theodolite. There were many ‘hammer’ trees in this 
country, some of them sixty feet high, with enormous 
branches reaching nearly to the ground, and with trunks six 
feet in diameter. 
“They bear a green, bean-like fruit, which tastes like 
vinegar, and which is cooked by the natives with their meat, 
or eaten raw. The leaves of the tree are very fern-like. 
We exchanged the two guides we had procured at Kére for 
two of the Buki people, and I then proceeded to the vil- 
lages of Gumba, that lay another five miles farther north.’ 
1 Most of this march was through dense jungle, which necessitated our stop- 
ping to chop many times. The country on the opposite side of the river ap- 
peared to be much the same as on the eastern side, — bushy, with here and there 
small durrha fields, and hamlets of the Kére people, and about every two miles 
covered with dense forests. The Murtu, or Muritu, inhabit the few low moun- 
tain ranges that are to be seen rising out of the great open plain far to the west, 
but they do not come close to the river. I was informed that a division of the 
Murtu, called Kodo, live about the southwestern end of the mountain range 
that runs parallel with the river Nianam, fifteen miles from the people of Gumba; 
and I was also informed by my guides that there was a good path along the 
western shore of the river, which was used by the Keére and Murtu in trad- 
ing with one another. I would have liked to cross the river and follow this 
path; but the only canoes to be had were small dug-outs, and I did not wish 
to spend much time in making rafts to transport my donkeys. We found the 
Gumba people inhabiting a village of about one hundred and forty houses, situ- 
ated on a bluff above the river. They are also an off-shoot of the Kére, and are 
extremely poor. I was surprised to find them suffering much from venereal dis- 
