The trees of the left side are unfortunately too far for us to distinguish them. The crew think, however, that they must be a kind of date-palms (naghel; the fruit, however, is called tammer, or bellàgh). But Mariàn says that there are many trees on that side belonging to the palm species, but bearing large, beautiful fruit, containing milk, which, he thought, were a species of cocoa-palm. These trees rise with a straight shaft similar to the date and dhellèb-palms; but the top appears to be entirely flat, like an extended fan, or a round table. I had seen also, from the ship, in that forest, some poison-trees: now, I heard dreadful things told of them, that even the scent of their flowers, or a thorn, nearly invisible on them, falling on one’s hand, is certain death, and that the natives poison their arrows with it. This Shudder el Simm is called, in the language of the Nubas, _Auer_, and I was curious to see the tree somewhat nearer. With the before-mentioned short course from W. to S.S.W., we came again to the right shore, and to the Haba, where we halted again. I sprang on the shore, which is only two and a half to three feet above the water, as in the preceding place, under the very same appearances, and I found in the poison-tree an old acquaintance of mine at Taka; but with this difference, however, that it might be called here a tree, whilst there it was only a shrub. Both of them are Euphorbias. I had, in Taka, cut off such a cactus-like plant, with its blue-reddish flowers, similar to those of the ushàr (_Asclepias procera_), and crushed it in my hand, when I punished in the Haba the stubbornness of my donkey, who wanted to join his brothers grazing in the meadow. I had involuntarily touched my lips and the tip of my tongue with the hand wet with the poisonous sap. Notwithstanding all the washing, I for two days found the taste of it quite abominable, without alarming myself the least about it, for I did not consider it more poisonous than the ushàr, the leaves of which are eaten by goats. These leaves, well-known from their intoxicating quality, are laid upon funnel-shaped sieves, in order to strain merissa through them, by which the milk, gushing from the leaves, mixes with the liquor itself. I made no ceremony of cutting off a branch from a poison-tree fifteen feet high, with the fruit, which are little round knobs, and had not yet come to maturity. The crew were somewhat angry when I came on board with it, and avoided me, till they saw that I laid it close to me on my bed, without the least evil consequences arising from it. Mariàn told me that they prepared the poison from this tree by boiling its milk and the sap, pressed between two stones; when this has become thick, like asside (meal-pap), the arrows are dipped into it.