€hap. XL VI. FORMER TOWNS OF THE SOY. 279 
We passed two villages called DeMbe Gezawa and 
Debabe Ngaya, but the latter of which still bears the 
very remarkable name of Krenik, and is stated by 
the inhabitants of the neighbourhood to have been 
the capital, or one of the capitals, of the once powerful 
tribe of the Soy. The exact period when this town 
was destroyed I could not ascertain ; but probably it 
happened during the reign of the great Kaniiri king 
Edris Alaw6ma, about the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century. More recently this neighbourhood was 
saturated with the blood of numbers of Bornu people, 
in the sanguinary struggle with their neighbours, the 
Bagirmi or Bagrimma; and it was in one of these 
conflicts, near the walled town of Miltam, about forty 
years ago (a. h. 1232), that the sheikh Mohammed 
el Kanemi lost his eldest and most-beloved son. 
Having watered our animals at a shallow stream, 
spreading out in the meadow-ground, we continued 
our march, and about half an hour before noon had 
to cross a very difficult swamp, with boggy ground, 
where several of our people stuck fast. The whole 
of this region is subject to partial inundations ; but 
it seems very remarkable that they do not attain 
their greatest height in, or at the end of, the rainy 
season, but several months later ; and I found after- 
wards, when I traversed this country again towards 
the end of August, in the very height of the rainy 
season, that not only this but the other swamps 
were considerably lower than they were in March. 
This circumstance depends on the peculiar nature of 
T 4 
