the dry season, the white ants carry their hills to so
great a height (about ten feet), that they can live
securely in the upper stories during the floods. The
whole day we are beset by erowds of starving people,
STARVING BOY OF KYTCH TRIBE BEGGING.
bringing smaE gourd-sheEs to receive the expected
corn. The people of this tribe are mere apes, trusting
entirely to the productions of nature for their subsistence
; they will spend hours in digging out field-mice
from their burrows, as we should for rabbits. They
are the most pitiable set of savages that can be
imagined; so emaciated, that they have no visible
posteriors ; they look as though they had been planed
off; and their long thin legs and .arms give them a
peculiar gnat-like appearance. At night they crouch
close to the fires, lying in the smoke to escape the
clouds of mosquitoes. At this season the country is a
vast swamp, the only dry spots being the white ant-
hiEs ; in such places the natives herd like wEd animals,
simply rubbing themselves with wood-ashes to keep
out the cold.
Jan. 20th.—The river from this spot turns sharp
to the east, but an arm equally broad comes from
S. 20 E. to this point. There is no stream from this
arm. The main stream runs round the angle with a
rapid current of about two and a half mEes per hour.
The natives say that this arm of dead water extends
for three or four days’ saEing, and is then lost in the
high reeds. My reis Diabb declares this to be a mere
backwater, and that it is not connected with the main
river by any positive channel.
, So miserable are the natives of the Kytch tribe, that
they devour both skins and bones of aE dead animals ;
the bones are pounded between stones, and when reduced
to powder they are boiled to a kind of porridge ;■