The bed of the Nile has raised itself here like in all other places, without the shore being proportionably elevated: this is also the case in Nubia and Egypt; for the level ground gives an indefinite extension to the stream, by which it can wallow and carouse in the untried shores; not to mention that this whole territory navigated by us was a fresh water lake. The shore land could not therefore be raised in the manner of downs here by the river, on account of the want of sand or light earth, and moreover, because the river deposits also but little slime, the ingredients of which flow away to the hollow land, and only receive their fertilizing qualities by the process that takes place on their journey. _Eight o’clock._—The faint S.W. veered for a short time to the North, with a slight squall, and we sailed with two miles course from S.W. to S.; but on the left the evolution continues in the form of an arch to E. by S., where we halt, in order to go, libàhn, the wind coming now from the east. The left shore forms a broad edge of high reeds, over which we cannot see. Red and blue convolvulus float and creep around, as well as two species of wild cucumbers, one of which has a large and deep yellow flower; the other, small and pale yellow. Reddish and yellowish flowing beans, and other water-plants, are entwined in picturesque confusion. On the left hand is observed in the distance a single palm, which was previously on our right, so that we can scarcely imagine how we shall get in the old path again. Over an extended, magnificently green savannah prairie of high grass, the melancholy Enderàb forest of yesterday is still visible at a distance: its soft wood is as brittle as glass. I yesterday split several stems of the ambak already described. I found, as previously, that they are more like a woody pith than real wood. No pith, properly speaking, is distinguished at the first sight, but I now discover that a pith-canal of about a quarter of an inch in diameter shoots through it. The contents were cleared out in the most careful manner by ants, as is generally the case where these insects are in the neighbourhood. The giant rush is becoming less abundant. The ray-formed expanding rushes of the corolla are often two feet long, and branch again into smaller ones, with the usual tendency of the flowers of rushes. From nine to half-past one o’clock, we have only made two miles and-a-quarter with the towing-rope, for the high reeds hung with creepers on the right margin of the river present endless difficulties. It is to be hoped that the N.E. wind which has now set in, will continue for a time, for we make three miles, as we go from E. by S., over S.E. to S. At three o’clock we make a further bend from S. over E. to N.E., yet with the line, where another margin of high reeds gave us the same trouble.