It shews a want of order, nautical policy, and tact, on the part of the commanders, to allow the poor inhabitants of the left shore to be injured. They are said for some days past to belong to the nation of the Nuèhrs. Suliman Kashef has made over some of his own crew to us, to assist in rowing our vessel; but Feïzulla plays tauola (tavola), or backgammon, with a Turk, and thinks, when he does not hear the stroke of the oar, that we are sailing. I had collected some pretty plants near those villages, and found wild cucumbers, without prickles, as well as a kind of aloe, seeming here to thrive on marshy soil. About five o’clock we had to be towed a short distance; then we took a little to our oars, and at sun-set joined the other ships in the east. The river has a depth of three fathoms and about three-quarters of a mile rapidity in the intersection. I appeal to Suliman Kashef to prevent the taking away and hewing up of sürtuks. He himself confesses that the Icthyophagi dwelling here in the reeds, being entirely cut off from the rest of the world, would be lost, as it were, without their fishing-boats, since they can neither swim nor wade through the marshes; he promises therefore to forbid it. _19th December._—We had cast anchor in the middle of the stream, and the right shore was raised above the grass, to the distance of a quarter of an hour; it was quite bare, notwithstanding its row of palm-trees. It is a dead calm, and we do not put ourselves in motion till half-past seven o’clock, assisting the slackened sails by rowing. We bend immediately to the W., and I see before me, to my astonishment, the sixteen palms again standing and the row of palms just mentioned behind us, as well as the vessels preceding us on the left towards the E. Near the palms of the right shore, we remarked not a family, but a small army of elephants, moving slowly here and there under the trees, apparently for the purpose of tasting the dhellèb-fruit. This is not yet grown to its full size, nor ripe; but perhaps they will shake it down by the weight of their body, as I have seen them in Taka, do with the doum-palms. Two elephants were previously shewn me in the country, where we saw the giraffes and ostriches, appearing in the far distance like hills, until they began to move. At half-past eight o’clock, S.E. by E., north-east wind, but faint, and only one mile and a half course. In the space of half an hour, we shall be advancing to the south, where the other ships are already. The serpentine winding of the Nile would have a beautiful appearance from an air-balloon, striving, as it does, to break a road through the reeds in all directions.