126 DRAINAGE TOWARDS THE SOBAT. [chap. y. 
Two or three of the men appeared willing, but the 
original ringleader/' Bellaal” would literally do nothing, 
not even assisting at loading the animals; but swag¬ 
gering about with the greatest insolence. 
After a fatiguing march of eight hours and ten 
minutes through a perfectly flat country interspersed 
with trees, we halted at a little well of excessively bad 
water at 7.35 p.m. The horses were so much in 
advance that the main party did not arrive until 11 p.m. 
completely fatigued. The night being fine, we slept 
on a hillock of sand a few yards from the well, rejoiced 
to be away from the mosquitoes of Gondokoro. 
On the following morning we started at sunrise, and 
in two hours fast marching we arrived at the Kanieti 
river. Although there had been no rain, the stream 
was very rapid and up to the girths of the horses at 
the ford. The banks were very abrupt and about 
fifteen feet deep, the bed between forty and fifty 
yards wide; thus a considerable volume of water is 
carried down to the river Sobat by this river during 
the rains. The whole drainage of the country tends 
to the east, and accordingly flows into the Sobat. The 
range of mountains running south from Ellyria is the 
watershed between the east and west drainage; the 
Sobat receiving it on the one hand, and the White Nile 
on the other, while the Nile eventually receives the 
entire flow by the Sobat, as previously mentioned, in 
lat. 9° 22'. 
Having scrambled up the steep bank of the Kanieti 
river, we crossed a large field of dhurra, and arrived 
at the village of Wakkala. The village, or town, is 
composed of about seven hundred houses, the whole 
being most strongly protected by a system of pali¬ 
sades formed of “babanoose,” the hard iron wood of 
the country. Not only is it thus fortified, but the 
palisades are also protected by a hedge of impervious 
thorns that grow to a height of about twenty feet. 
The entrance to this fort is a curious archway, about 
ten feet deep, formed of the iron-wood palisades, with 
