220



Mr. Richard Staples-Browne.



sharply marked. At the mouth of the river are the ruins of an

old fort, built by Lord Kitchener at the time of the Fashoda

incident. We steamed up the Sobat as far as Doleib Hill, a

station of the American Presbyterian Mission. The river is

narrow, the banks fairly wooded and covered with high coarse

grass. There were several bushes of the poisonous Sodom Apple.

I saw a large flock of Marabou Storks. The mission station is

prettily situated in a grove of Palms, and possesses a garden

containing orange, lime, papoia and custard-apple trees, also a

banana plantation. They have a small farm, with a good short¬

horn bull, which has to be kept in a mosquito-proof shed, and a

poultry run containing fowls, turkeys and guinea-fowls. The

missionaries do good medical work, and I was shown many cases

of leprosy, elephantiasis, and other strange exotic complaints ;

in fact, their little hospital might be regarded as a veritable

zoological garden of disease. Several Eucalyptus trees have

been planted about the station, which are doing extremely well.

In the garden I saw a pair of Long-tailed Glossy Starlings (Lam-

protornis caiidatus). After leaving the Mission we returned to

the White Nile and continued our course north, arriving at 6

p.m. at Taufikia, an important military station. Here we remained

a couple of hours and I again saw some Glossy Starlings. There

were several Grey Herons ( Ardea cinerea ) near the town. In the

evening the strong head wind continued and it became quite cold.


Feb. 20th. We passed Kodok (Fashoda) at one a.m. and

Melut at 8.30. The wind continued very high and we were

obliged to put up the awnings on deck to keep the spray out.

I11 the afternoon we arrived at Meshra-el-Zeraf, a new wood-

station in the middle of a fine game country. Here we remained

several hours and I took the opportunity of going for a long walk

into the scrub, which consisted, as usual, of Acacias and Mimosa

bushes. Birds were very numerous, and among them I saw the

Arsinoe Bulbul (Pycnovohis arsinoe), the Brown-necked Fire-Finch

(. Lago?iosticta senegala brnnneiccps), the Indigo Finch ( Hypochcera

riltraviarina) and the African Silver-bill Finch (Mania cantans).

There were very many Waxbills in the bushes, including the

Cordon Bleu which is very common here. The bush was alive

with the twitterings of the various species and the coos of pigeons



