Chap. XXVII. REGION OF THE DU'M-PALM. 
199 
long before day-light, which was against my prin- 
ciple, as well in a scientific as in a material point of 
view; for neither should I have been able to lay 
down the road with correctness, nor would even the 
best arms have guaranteed my safety while marching 
in the dark. We therefore allowed them next morn- 
ing to have the start of us for full two hours, and 
then followed. 
We now entered a district which may Sunday) 
be most appropriately called the exclusive March 23rd * 
region of the dum-palm or Cucifera Thebdica in 
Negroland ; for though this tree is found, in large 
clusters or in detached specimens, in many localities 
of Central Africa, yet it is always limited to some 
favoured spot, especially to the bank of a watercourse, 
as the komadugu near the town of Yo, and there is 
no other district of such extent as this tract between 
Kalemri and Zurrikulo where the Cucifera Thebaica 
is the characteristic and almost the only tree. My 
Gatroni thought that the trees would perhaps not 
bear fruit here ; but on my second journey, in the 
month of December, they were loaded with fruit. 
The country has a very peculiar open character, a 
sandy level very slightly undulating, covered thinly 
with tall reed-grass shooting forth from separate 
bunches, the line of view broken only now and then 
by a cluster of slender fan-palms, without a single 
trace of cultivation, I was anxious afterwards to know 
whether this tract has always had this monotonous, 
deserted character, or whether it had contained for- 
o 4 
