OUR STATIONS ON THE NILE 195 



it. To the latter belong the Shuli, and Abura became seriously 

 alarmed whether his subjects might not depose him on hearing 

 to what he had submitted. He arranged in that case to return 

 with all his family and followers, and settle on the British side 

 of the Nile. However, his fears proved groundless. Another of 

 his complications was ringworm. Of this disease I saw several 

 cases at Fajao on our side of the river. Abura had only 

 brought two of his wives with him ; they were absolutely nude. 

 He, however, and all his men were covered, wearing an apron 

 of goat-skin. 



The Shuli wear anklets, bracelets, armlets, and necklets of 

 brass wire or beads; but a remarkable fashion with many of 

 them is to pierce the under-hp and stick through it a short blunt 

 pencil of glass one to two inches long. They push it through 

 from inside, so that the thick end of the pencil touches the teeth. 



They are expert fishermen with hook and line and, in spite 

 of the hundreds of crocodiles, fearlessly paddle in their fragile 

 dug-outs amid the foaming and whirling backwash of the river, 

 where it forms the deep bay-like indentations. They have 

 neither float nor lead to their line, and the hook is only a most 

 ridiculous bent piece of soft iron-wire, and yet 1 saw them catch 

 fish after fish, a species of large delicious mullet. Two other 

 species of fish caught here are a large mud-fish and the small 

 bony perch one sees at Mruli. 



On my second visit to Fajao, Abura sent word that he would 

 like very much to see me, but that he had received orders from 

 the supreme chief at Wadelai that neither he nor the other Shuli 

 chiefs were to be friendly with the EngHsh, but were to support 

 the cause of ex-king Kabarega. 



The Fajao garrison were going through a trying time with 

 their crops ; drought, locusts, hippos, and baboons uniting to 

 impoverish the settlement. As might be expected from its being 

 a settlement in a tropical forest, all sorts of interesting zoolo- 

 gical specimens frequent these woods. The black and white 

 Colobus and several other species of monkey, a green squirrel 

 with three black stripes from head to tail, a red-nosed rat with 

 a red patch near the tail, and lovely specimens of papilio and 

 charaxes. A little lower down the river the pepper - plant, 

 bearing the small red chili pods, grows wild in profusion as 

 a common shrub eight feet high. 



The road from Fajao to Masindi, lying through the late chief 



