We row again a little, and wait till ten o’clock for Hüssein Aga’s clumsy kaiàss, although a slight N.E. wind has set in. We then sail N.W. and make two miles and a half. At three o’clock we go W.S.W. slowly into the great lake, wherein the Gazelle river (Bahr el Gasáll) disembogues itself. This river is said to flow here from the country of the Magrabis (Berbers), as some soldiers affirmed, who had served under Mustapha Bey, and pretended to have pressed forward to its shores. Touching this lake and the river, the name of which we could not learn, for its borders are entirely covered with reeds, and therefore cannot be inhabited, the declaration of the soldiers was only a confirmation of what Mustapha Bey told me in Khartùm. On account of the dead calm, we halt on the right reedy shore of the stream, in the lake itself, beyond which we do not yet distinguish land, any more than to the left. Over a yellowish tract, there, which the water may have left, like an island, green grass and the ascending smoke, announcing human life, shew themselves again and denote a firm shore. The lake may be from eighteen to twenty sea miles square. In the evening, the smoke appeared like long-extended peculiar fireworks, rising equally high; and there was no doubt that this was ignited high grass, a sight which, from Sennaar to this place, was no longer new to me. The Gazelle river glimmered far beyond, the grasses impeding its mouth; and I distinguished plainly, from the elevated poop, that it emptied itself into two arms, S.W. by W. and S.W., forming a delta, obtuse at the top. My servant, who was at the mast-head, confirmed me in the opinion of this more extensive direction, by stretching out his arm to that region. Dead fish, of the species called garmùt (_Heterobranchus, bidorsalis Geoff._), real monsters in size, had already previously floated towards us; they were said to have been harpooned by the inhabitants of the shore, as very probably was the case. Our angling, however, procured us few or no fish. It was not so much the north wind, as the abundance of food brought by the inundation, that kept them away from our bait.