A credulous traveller would have been misled by some of the strange fables put forward, with great plausibility, by these Arabs and other semi-savages, who have, moreover, a strong tendency to exaggerate, and who, perceiving the avidity with which Mr Werne investigated the animal and vegetable world around him, and his desire for rare and curious specimens, occasionally got up a lie for his benefit. Although kept awake many nights by the merciless midges, his zeal for science would not suffer him to sleep in the day, because he had no one he could trust to note the windings of the river. One sultry noon, however, when the Arab rowers were lazily impelling the craft against unfavourable breezes, and the stream was straight for a long distance ahead, he indulged in a siesta, during which visions of a happy German home hovered above his pillow. On awaking, bathed in perspiration, to the dismal realities of the pestilential Bach'r el Abiat, of incessant gnats and barbarian society, his Arab companions had a yarn cut and dried for him. During my sleep they had seen a swimming-bird as large as a young camel, with a straight beak like a pelican, but without a crop; they had not shot it for fear of awaking me, and because they had no doubt of meeting with some more of these unknown birds. No others appeared, and Mr Werne noted the camel-bird as an Egyptian lie, not as a natural curiosity. A month's sail carried the expedition into the land of the Keks, a numerous, but not a very prosperous tribe. Their _tokuls_ or huts were entirely of straw, walls as well as roof. The men were quite naked, and of a bluish-gray colour, from the slime of the Nile, with which they smear themselves as a protection against the gnats. "There was something melancholy in the way in which those poor creatures raised their hands above their heads, and let them slowly fall, by manner of greeting. They had ivory rings upon their arms, and one of them turned towards his hut, as if inviting us in. Another stood apart, lifted his arms, and danced round in a circle. A Dinka on board, who is acquainted with their language, said they wanted us to give them durra, (a sort of corn,) and that their cows were far away and would not return till evening. This Dinka positively asserted, as did also Marian, that the Keks kill no animal, but live entirely on grain and milk. I could not ascertain, with certainty, whether this respect for brute life extended itself to game and fish, but it is universally affirmed that they eat cattle that die a natural death. This is done to some extent in the land of Sudan, although not by the genuine Arabs: it is against the Koran to eat a beast even that has been slain by a bullet, unless its throat has been cut whilst it yet lived, to let the prohibited blood escape. At Chartum I saw, one morning early, two dead camels lying on a public square; men cut off great pieces to roast, and the dogs looked on longingly. I myself, with