17th December.—Immediately after sunrise we sailed S.S.E.; at eight o’clock, S.S.W., and at nine o’clock, S.W. by S. The stream we navigate is tolerably broad, and appears, so far as we can see over the reedy-sea, to be the only one. On the right shore we have still the dhellèb-palms of yesterday in sight; the land retreats towards S.E., whilst the left shore comes nearer, and lets us see individual tokuls and villages. Some blacks stand on the shore, which approaches us at nine o’clock within gun-shot. They greet us and make signs, but we cannot go to them on account of the reeds, willingly as we would make their acquaintance, in order to provide ourselves again with meat. Ten o’clock. The left shore appears to go S.W. with the river, calculating from some trees and dhellèb-palms. The east wind is tolerably strong; we make three miles. A large pelican was shot, and there were found in the pouch under its bill twenty-four fresh fish, the size of moderate herrings. This burden had impeded its flight from our vessels, and prevented it from swallowing its prey, on the death-shot, as is usual with these birds. If we consider this enigmatical stream territory, we ask ourselves whether the white river, of and _by itself_, with such a weight of water, can maintain these lagoons under an African sun? Were the Nile _one_ stream, it must flow off faster; for the rains have already ceased here, and previously, indeed, under the Equator itself. How could the Nile, which still shews its peculiar disposable mass of water, in its main-stream, supply, quite _alone_, that enormous mass of water, and even to the present time maintain under water these immense reedy lakes, unless other tributary streams, the mouths of which stagnate, owing to the level nature of the ground, and the counter-pressure of the main-stream, supplied a nourishment great beyond belief, to this, with which it equally rises and falls? For the whole mass of water _in complexu_ must suffer an incredible diminution during such a long tract in its slow ebbing, under a burning sun, or this Bahr-el-Abiad must have real giant-springs in its source.