We could plainly remark near the numberless ant-hills, of eight to ten feet high, and thirty to thirty-six paces in circumference, by the difference of the same vegetation, how far the water has washed over these hills, and how inconsiderably it has reached up to the same, although the whole earth, in which there are many foot-prints, and marks of elephants, rose itself only two feet above the present surface of water. Even here, therefore, where a lake must always disclose itself when the water is at its greatest height, the ascent of the river is only slight, owing to its overflowing in an immeasurable space. In a more extended excursion, I lighted upon a low green plot of ground with water, and as I had remarked from the deck and mast-head, these verdant tracks are found again in the half-dug elephant-pasture. They may be old beds of the Nile, choked up by reeds and slime. Wild cucumbers were very frequently met with here, and with their yellow flowers, often take the high rushes on the water into their friendly embrace. The under stratum of the ground is formed here also, as elsewhere, by blue clay, mixed with a little sand, whereon a covering of humus lies, the vegetable parts of which are visible in masses, less from their being decomposed by the atmosphere, than from being worked up by the feet of animals. Hygrometer, at eight o’clock, eighty degrees. _24th December._—After everything had been dried and packed up again yesterday, we make, towards the evening, a very short track, in order to secure ourselves somewhat more from the gnats, which have, on the whole, decreased, and we cast anchor. Our clock, put at six at sunset, shewed also six o’clock, when the sun rose S.E. by E. The trombetta (drummers) beat a _reveillée_ at the first tinge of dawn; that is here an hour and a quarter before the sun; yet I could not read for the first half hour. The whole sky has been clouded since we left the country of the Shilluks; and although they are not our heavy white clouds, the sun cannot penetrate through them. A mist, in appearance like a coast cut off from the horizon, surrounded us on all sides, without visibly extending itself in our neighbourhood. This layer of mist, however, was open from S. to S.W., where the river probably flows, with which the mist nearest to us melted away before daybreak, as I have so often remarked on the Rhine. The hazy streak of the rising sun is splendidly irradiated from E. to S., and therefore deludes us to believe that it is a broad luminous stream, or white lake, contrasted with the dark edge of the sky. I had remarked, the evening before last, a similar misty veil to the east, and, as I expected, there were light mists yesterday morning, before sunrise, on the river, and slowly floating down with it.