PILE-DWELLINGS. 3 1 9 



rock is generally whitish-grey or bluish in colour, and 

 sometimes it shows broad stripes in white or dark grey. 

 Petherick and Dr. Schweinfurth have already noticed these 

 remnants of an ancient range of mountains. The steppe wood 

 is mostly filled with high grass. On the whole, the ground is 

 composed of that widespread red clay, covered with quartz 

 rubble, which becomes more and more predominating as we 

 proceed to the south. Here and there the npper stratum has 

 been worn down into coarse sand, and towards Bun yellow 

 alluvial sand occurs with quartz fragments. In the depressions, 

 however, a black layer of humus overlies the red clay, and 

 forms in wet places muddy pools, which are the favourite 

 haunts of elephants. On the other hand, in drier places it is 

 even now cracked and fissured in all directions. 



The grass steppe, with its clumps of doleb palms, is suc- 

 ceeded beyond Khor Lomario by a dense acacia bush, passing 

 which we entered extensive fields of durrah and dokhn, inter- 

 spersed by places where the bushes and high grass had been 

 left standing in order to provide material for building purposes. 

 Thousands of finches haunt these fields, and are a great plague. 

 The havoc which weaver and widow birds (Hyphantornis, 

 Euplectes) are capable of perpetrating in maize and dokhn fields 

 is absolutely astonishing. A covering of green leaves does 

 not always suffice to protect the maize-cobs from their strong 

 conical beaks. We reached the river shortly before midday. 

 The path led so close along the edge of its yellow loamy bank, 

 which is sixteen to twenty feet high, that if we dropped a 

 paper it fell into the water. The latter was now of a yellowish 

 colour, and appeared to be alive with fishes. 



Here, at last, we were among the pile-dwellings. A platform, 

 supported upon over three hundred stout piles, each one six feet 

 high, stood within a broken-down bamboo fence. It had a length 

 of ninety feet, a width of eighty feet, was made of timber and 

 brushwood, and covered with clay and cow-dung, to form a 

 level flooring. The ground-floor among the piles serves as a 

 kitchen and storehouse; the water-jars and the marlicikJca (grind- 

 stone) are placed in it, and the servants sleep there. A square 

 hole in the centre of the platform provides this lower room with 

 light, and ladders lead through the hole to the platform. This 



