386 
CURIOUS SMALL FORMATIONS. 
swollen limb. From our remnant of medical comforts 
we were able to give liim some plaster, and he went 
gaily away on one leg, so pleased, that he sent us a 
plate of rice and some tomato. I have a recollection 
of seeing strewed on the broken ground about Kaka, 
curious formations, which may have been ancient relics, 
or concrete ; but, in order to direct attention to them, 
I may mention that Dr Falconer, the fossil authority 
of the day, suggests that they may have been fossil 
remains. The whole depot of Kaka turned out to 
greet our captain, calling him by name " Diab." They 
intrusted him with messages, billets-doux, and money, 
till he seemed astonished at their number. Even 
after we had sailed, two men ran along the shore 
with letters, which were thrown at our boat, and 
cleverly caught by one of the crew. 
The evening before our arrival at Kaka we saw 
twenty boats at anchor in a river said to be a branch 
of the Sobat, on the right bank of the Nile. They 
lay one mile up its stream, and the people were on 
their way to punish some Denka, having with them 
camels, donkeys, and ponies. I could not learn the 
name of this unexpected river, but our captain assured 
us that it was not a branch of the Nile, which, indeed, 
it did not appear to be. Hence Captain Speke has 
written of it as a second Sobat ; while Consul Pethe- 
rick asserts that it only exists in Captain Speke's 
imagination. The windings of the river in this lati- 
tude, about 12° N., were very eccentric : sometimes 
our " head 99 was west, at other times direct upon the 
polar star, as when passing a solitary hill, a strange 
sight in the Denka country. The heat was excessive 
— 94° in the shade, making the bilge- water very dis- 
