388 A BRAVE GERMAN AMONG THE CANNIBALS 



big sheet he enveloped himself in il, and nnder its sheher had to set to 

 work one hy one to crnsh the hees enclosed with him beneath it. At 

 last, after three hours, the buzzing* sul)sided, and the men setting- fire 

 to the reeds on the bank induced these insect plagues to shift thefr 

 quarters. One of the traveler's dogs had been stung to death ; and as 

 for himself, though with pincers he was able to remove the stings from 

 his face, those beneath his hair produced small ulcers which were 

 (painful for several days. 



Passing up the White Nile through the country of the Shillooks, 

 and reaching the mouth of the river Sobat, Schweinfurth there made a 

 very fortunate acquaintance in the person of Mohammed Aboo 

 Sammatt, an influential ivory merchant, who offered to accompany him 

 into the interior, and in the event, from first to last, proved a most 

 valuable companion and friend. On arriving at the confluence of the 

 Bahr-el-Ghazal with the White Nile, great annoyance and delay was 

 caused by those masses of vegetation blocking up the river which 

 Baker had previously met with. 



"Two hundred of our people," he says, "sailors and soldiers, were 

 obliged to lug with ropes for hours together to pull through one boat 

 after the other, while they walked along the edge of the floating mass, 

 which would bear whole herds of oxen, as I subsequently had an oppor- 

 tunity of seeing." 



On March 25th, joining several other caravans that were starting 

 for the interior, Schweinfurth and his men, leaving the river, started 

 on their inland journey to the w'est, traveling through the countries of 

 the Dyoor, Dinka and Bongo tribes. One great nuisance on the way 

 was the tremendous noise which the Nubians of the caravan would 

 constantly make at night. When tipsy with their national drink, 

 "merissa," they banged for hours together the kettledrums which hung 

 at the entrance of the seriba, or village. After vain remonstrances, 

 Schweinfurth took the liberty of sprinkling the parchment of these 

 huge drums with muriatic acid, so that the next time they were 

 drummed upon they split across, and thus, for a time at least, he 

 obtained peace. 



After an excursion into the Mittoo country, where, as everywhere, 

 he collected abundant fresh botanical and zoological specimens, prepa- 



