The steersman would often be puzzled what direction to take if we did not push against the stream, which requires labour and exertion. If it were otherwise, they would let themselves drift with “Allah Kerim,” and most certainly would fall every moment with the high water into unknown paths among the reeds, and pass several islands by force, or remain sticking therein. At half-past nine o’clock we proceed westwards, in order to go again southwards after a quarter of an hour, as we see by the vessels sailing before us. At eleven o’clock to S.W. two miles and a quarter, and at twelve o’clock only one mile and a quarter. At one o’clock the wind has almost entirely died away, when we again turn towards the south. The sixteen palms are still visible behind us, and we must have advanced in little curves, as we see by the vessels behind us, during my short sleep, caused by the nightly epileptic fits of Feïzulla Capitan. Wonderful to relate, we have sailed by them, the captain having roused himself, for a short time, from his apathy. Bushes of high reeds, and little forests of ambaks in Nile grass; before us a long group of palms, which, as Fadl at the mast-head thinks, belongs to the right shore. From south we make a small bend towards east, and turn a little corner of the left shore of reeds to S.W., where we again derive some advantage from the nearly exhausted wind. I hear from the mast that the left shore winds back to south, and that the right again approaches the river in a semicircle. For some days past the stream has appeared whitish or clouded to the superficial observer. Viewing it however, through the glass, we find it quite clear. It is also well tasted, which was not the case throughout the marshy lakes. If we find the river, having here a breadth of five hundred paces, and a depth of from three to four fathoms, we continue to ask the question, from whence does this enormous mass of water come? We have already passed the limits wherein the Mountains of the Moon have been placed. It would almost seem the river is accumulated in a cauldron-shaped valley, the declivities of which encroach with long arms on the African world, and from which the discharge after the periodical rains would be also only _periodical_. Unless it has an immeasurable tributary stream as an unfailing source from a south-westerly ramification of the Abyssinian high lands, because the _level_ ground, notwithstanding its tropical vegetation, has too little power of attraction to justify such an enormous power of throwing out water by the instrumentality of a lake, under the absorbing African sun.