On the 3rd of December, as no camels came, although the Pasha must have passed the province Berber, whence he was going to send us the necessary number, I sent our own trustworthy and excellent _khawass_, Ibrahim Aga, through nine days wilderness, to Berber, with Mohammed Ali’s _firman_. In the meantime, we went on to Wadi Halfa to the second cataract, visited the numerous monuments in that neighbourhood, and returned hither in three weeks, with a rich harvest. It is thirty-one days this morning, since our _khawass_ has departed, and some time since I received a letter from the Mudhir of Berber, in which I learn that the camels cannot be collected, although immediately on the arrival of our _khawass_, and the delivery of the letter from the Mudhir of this place, he sent out soldiers to get together the necessary number of sixty camels. Matters are just the same there as here. The authorities can do nothing against the ill-will of the Arabs. On the sudden death, by poison, of Ahmed Pasha,[69] the governor of the whole Sudan, at Chartûm, who, it is said, had for some time been meditating an independence of Mohammed Ali, the south is divided into five provinces, and placed under five pashas, who are to be installed by Ahmed Pasha Menekle. One of them, Emir Pasha, was formerly Bey under Ahmed Pasha, at Chartûm, whom he seems to have betrayed. Three others arrived at Korusko, soon after Ahmed Pasha Menekle. Of these, the most powerful, Hassan Pasha, is gone by water to Wadi Halfa, in his province of Dongola; he was almost unattended, and required but a few camels to get on farther. The second, Mustaffa Pasha, intended for Kordofan, has seized on a trade caravan returning from Berber. The Arabs report, however, that of these tired animals, a part have already become useless before arriving at the wells, which lie at about four day’s journey into the wilderness; there he found some merchants, eight of whose camels he seized; the remainder of the caravan has not arrived here, but had taken another road to Egypt for fear of being stopped again. The third, Pasha Ferhât, is waiting here, at the same time with ourselves, and tries every plan that he can think of, to procure a few camels from the north or south. But every hope of ours thus becomes fainter and fainter, as we cannot set the insignificant power of the authorities so mightily to work as he, and have not now either _khawass_ or _firman_ with us. Everyone, and the pashas most particularly, endeavours to comfort us from day to day; but, meantime, the winter, the only time when we can do anything in the Upper Country, elapses. To this must be added, that the Mudhir of Lower Nubia, with whom we had become friendly, has been accused to Mohammed Ali by the Nubian sheikh of his province, and had just been summoned away by the viceroy, This region has been provisionally placed under the jurisdiction of the Mudhir of Esneh, from whose lieutenant, a young, and otherwise well-disposed man, there is