On the 29th of February we arrived at nine o’clock in Abdîn. The wind was unfavourable on the 1st of March, and we proceeded but little, so that I had plenty of time for shooting birds. Toward evening I came to a village, lying very romantically in a creek of the river, which is here broader. Many huts built of straw poked their pointed roofs into the branches of thickly-leaved trees. Narrow tortuous paths, forming a real labyrinth, led among thorns and trunks from one hut to another, in and before which the black families were lying and the children playing by a sparing light. I asked for milk, but was referred to an adjoining Arab village, whither a man conducted me, armed with a lance, the general weapon of the country. By light brushwood and high grass we came to the great herds of cattle of the Arabs, who had pitched their mat huts about the grazing place. The Fellahs of this region are much browner than the wandering Arabs, although far from being negroes, and they seem to coincide with the Nubians in race. On the 2nd of March we anchored by an island, near the eastern shore. At a little distance from the landing-place, the Rais perceived a broken crocodile egg at a spot newly dug. He dug away with his hands, and found forty-four eggs three feet down in the sand. They were still covered with a slimy substance, as they had only been laid the day before or in the past night. The crocodiles like to leave the river in a windy night, make a hole for the eggs, cover them up again, and the wind soon blows away every trace. In a few months the young ones creep out. The eggs are like great goose-eggs, but rounded off at both ends, as the latter are only at the large end. I had some boiled; they are eaten, but have an unpleasant taste, so I willingly yielded them up to the sailors, who ate them with a great appetite. We landed near the deserted village of Dáhela, on the eastern shore, whence I proceeded alone inland for three-quarters of an hour. The character of the vegetation remains the same. The earth is dry and level; the inconsiderable hills and dales that occur are not original, but seem to have been formed by the rain. My goal was a great tamarind tree, which rose mightily amidst the low trees and bushes, and was encircled by a number of fluttering green and red birds, the species of which is yet unknown to me.