122 NORTH-EAST AFEICA. 



downwards on the ground and sham death ; the buffalo sniffs round the body for 

 some minutes and then goes away without touching it. The Shilluks believe in the 

 supernatural, but pay little attention to it. They worship an ancestor whom they 

 consider to be both a god and the creator of all things ; they invoke the spirits of 

 the stream and wash in its holy water, but only in fear and trembling speak of the 

 spirits of the dead, which hover in the air and pass into the bodies of animals and 

 trunks of trees. The throne does not pass in direct descent from father to son, 

 but to the sister's child or to some other relative on the female side. Until the 

 new king has been proclaimed the corpse of his predecessor remains enclosed in 

 his tokul ; his daughters are forbidden to marry, and confined in a village set apart 

 for the purpose. 



TOPOGKAPHY. 



The town of Fas/ioda, established by the Egyptian Government in 1867, as the 

 capital of its province of Bahr-el-Abiad, is in Shilluk territory. Although the 

 residence of the Shilluk king, it was at that time the village of Denab, a mere 

 group of straw huts ; it is now an imposing square fortress surrounded by palings, 

 depots, and enclosures ; but at the beginning of 1884 it was a city of the dead, the 

 war having caused the people to quit their dwellings. Here the Egyptian Govern- 

 ment used to send those condemned to perpetual exile. Fashoda occupies a good 

 strategic position on the left bank of the Nile, at the great bend which it describes 

 in its northern course beyond the Bahr-ez-Zaraf and Sobat jimction. The conflu- 

 ence itself is defended east by the post of Takufikiyah, so-called in honour of the 

 Khedive, and west by the village of Sobat, established officially with a view to 

 overlook the Negro slave-dealers. Kaka, recently the chief slave market of the 

 Upper Nile, is the most important place in the Shilluk country ; it lies on the left 

 bank of the river, near the northern frontier. 



