Chap. XLIII. EXTENSIVE RICE -FIELDS. 
161 
pean foot. Our departure having been delayed in 
the morning, owing to the separating of the army, 
we started rather late, leaving the sheikh, with the 
rest of the "kebu," behind. The country at once 
presented a new and interesting feature. Already in 
Bornu a considerable proportion of our diet had con- 
sisted of native rice, and we had been rather astonished 
at its black colour and bad quality. We had heard 
that it grew wild in the southern provinces of the 
country ; but we had never yet seen it, and it was 
only this morning, after we had left Diggera and had 
traversed extensive stubble-fields of millet intermixed 
with beans, that we obtained a first view of a " shin- 
kafaram," or wild rice-field, in the midst of the forest. 
We were then no longer surprised at the quality of 
the rice brought to the market in Kiikawa being so 
bad, as we felt justified in presuming that the ele- 
phant would have sense enough to take the best for 
himself, and leave the rest for the people. As we 
proceeded we found the whole wilderness, although 
not thickly wooded, full of pools of water and dense 
rice-fields. 
The country to-day presented a truly tropical as- 
pect ; and our encampment, lying near an extensive 
pond, or small lagoon, surrounded with a luxuriant 
growth of rice and a dense border of spreading trees, 
was so full of the footprints of the elephant, that 
scarcely a level spot of two or three feet in diameter 
could be found. This was by no means pleasant, in 
our present mode of living, as we were without a 
VOL. III. M 
