On the 22nd of February we arrived on the western shore by a little village, where the inhabitants, mere women and children, fled through the sandy plain to the woods, from fear of our appearance, probably as they expected to be impressed for the purpose of drawing the bark. On the opposite shore lay another village, whence we saw a stately procession of finely-dressed men in Arab and Turkish dresses, and some handsomely caparisoned horses, proceed to the river. It was the Kashef and the most noble sheiks of Abu Háras, to whom we had been announced by Ahmed Pasha, as we had determined to proceed hence with camels and guides into the desert of Mandera. The horses were destined for us, and we therefore rode to the house of the Kashef, to inquire again about the antiquities of Mandera and Qala. As the desert route to the coast of the Red Sea leads hence from those places, we found several persons who had been near them. From all their tales, however, I could but find that at these two places there are only fortress-like mounds, or at most roughly built walls, as a refuge for caravans, without any buildings or hieroglyphical inscriptions. At Qala there may be some camels and horses scratched in the rock by the Arabs, or some other people, like those we had seen in the great desert at the wells of Murhad. We therefore determine to give up this journey, and instead of it go somewhat farther up the river, in order to learn the nature of the Nile stream, its shores and inhabitants, as far as time would permit us. At a short half-hour distance from Abu Háras we came to the mouth of the Rahad, which conveys a great quantity of water into the Nile in the rainy season, but was now almost dry, with only a little stagnant water, which may disappear altogether next month.