The whole horizon is without a high tree; only the ambak covers, in small thickets, a great part of the island, which is still drawing nearer to us. The ambak appears here considerably higher and stronger, to which the warmer climate, together with the earlier inundation and the growth thereby produced, has mostly contributed. On the return voyage I will try to procure, at all events, seeds of it; for I am really curious to see, at some future day, this new species of tree, the ambak, in my own native country, even should it be in a hot-house. Although it may not thrive and grow as quickly with us as here, yet I am quite sure that its incredible productive powers will excite the more astonishment, because its many large flowers and great succulent acacia-like leaf, make it an ornamental tree. The current of the river was tolerably strong this morning, and amounted to nearly one mile. This difference depends simply on the _many_ windings of the river, a greater or less fall could be scarcely followed up in a _single_ one. The medium for these parts may remain always half a mile. As we see here all the corners of the shore, without exception, still in the water with their reeds, it may be supposed that there is also a more shallow river-bed. Vegetation grows from beneath and the side into the river-bed, and the reeds advancing in out-and-in bending angles, make the first step to press and encroach on the river. Slime always sticks to the corners of these angles, and depositing and rising up from beneath, spreads again its own vegetation. I see here water-thistles, with lanceolate leaves, and reddish flowers of the thickness of a finger, exactly as are seen in our fish-ponds. Green water-lentils cover the sides of the stream, and are a plain proof of the stagnating water flowing off in it. At half-past eight o’clock I hear from Fadl, at the mast, that we are sailing to the south; that there is a large lake with a village towards the E. and in the S.E.; also a large lake on the before-named island, of which the former is a quarter of an hour, and the other half an hour distant from the river. He is not able to see the other arm of the river along the right shore, and therefore it has either lessened in breadth, for previously at its conflux it was broader than our water-course, or it is very far distant; for Fadl remarks trees on the right shore, from two hours and a half to three hours distant, which may be standing indeed on the margin of the river, whilst its water may be concealed by the ambak thickets.