258 LABORE TO FATIKO. 



Kuitu hills are overgrown with acacias, Balanites, and, unfor- 

 tunately, with Randia also, and glossy thrushes (Lamprocolius 

 chalcurus) were flitting over them in remarkable numbers. 

 The weaver-birds, still moulting, were busily repairing their 

 hanging nests, which shows that the rainy season has not yet 

 set in here. The handsome Astur metabatcs is very common 

 everywhere, and seems to take the place of its northern relative 

 A. polyzonus. We descended by rather steep natural stairs to 

 the river, which we reached exactly two hours thirty-four 

 minutes after we had left Keren, as compared with two hours 

 forty minutes last year. 



Having been ferried across the river, which was already 

 (May 26) swollen with rain that had fallen in the south, we 

 soon reached Lahore, and there ended our expedition, which 

 I hope has not proved altogether fruitless in regard to the 

 geography of this district. 



4. Fkom Labore via Fadibjsk to Fatiko.* 



OPPOSITE LAB6RE — A MADI FUNERAL — CONFUSION IN THE GEOGRAPHICAL 

 NOMENCLATURE — MADI VILLAGES — BARI DISTRICT — KHOR ATAPPI — 

 THE HOT SPRINGS OF KHOR ASUA— A GREYISH-GREEN LANDSCAPE — 

 ETHNOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE SHULI — FADIBEK — A LAND OP 

 THORNS — SHULI HUTS — APICULTURE — CHIEF AKU6K — SHULI SMITHS — 

 SHULI CUSTOMS — THE VIEW FROM JEBEL ABAYO — FRIEND ROCHAMA'S 

 WELCOME. 



The ferry across the Nile near Lahore lies about two-thirds 

 of a mile above the station on the way to Khor Ayu. As the 

 river there is scarcely more than 200 feet broad, it did not 

 take us long to cross, and we landed a little farther to the 



* A letter forwarded with this paper to Herr Hansal, the Austro-Hungarian 

 Consul at Khartum, dated Wadelai, November 28, 1SS0, reads as follows :— 



" The notes contained in the enclosed pages were collected and compiled during 

 a tour of inspection in the south ; their somewhat cursory form may perhaps be 

 excused, on the ground that I had neither time nor inclination to round off and 

 polish materials collected in the midst of grass and thorns. If, therefore, I ven- 

 ture to request that the notes may be kindly forwarded to the " Royal and Imperial 

 Geographical Society " in Vienna, to be used as thought best, it is because the 



