Half-past one o’clock.—Fadl tells me from the mast, that the large island before mentioned, turns out to be a peninsula. The other arm of the stream approaches again our river, with the right shore, but its water is lost against the ascending surface of its river bed; however, it may at high water, have flowed over this, although it is not shewn by any remarkable hollow. This arm is also choked up above, though it has preserved the lower part of its bed. If we only think of this large horizontal water-line, from the foot of the island up to the damming up in our neighbourhood, we see plainly how melancholy it must look at the fall of the White Stream. The right side of the river is close to us, and the wood on the left, perhaps containing here the old tract of the shore, is, as Fadl tells me, nearly three hours’ journey off. He calculates distances correctly, though always at something less than myself, for he has longer legs, and is of the active race, who run in their journeys to water and bread with as much _goût_, as we to the outstretched arms of an inn. Where the river winds to S.E. a group of small ambak and grass islands enter into the landscape; thousands of birds enliven a lake, the two tributaries of which draw in to the east, and from the east to south. I hear, however, from the mast, that they are neither tributaries nor arms of the Nile, and soon come to an end. A trace of a more extensive gohr or rain-river discharging itself here, and now, perhaps, dried up, to which supposition we are led, at the first glance, cannot be followed by the eye. These are, perhaps, indeed, old arms of the Nile, now choked up and grown over; the sluggish stream may not be able to cover them again, but overflows them at high-water. Creepers and flowers fantastically entwined hang around on the margin of the reeds, behind which the high ambak-trees stand, also in flower. Two o’clock.—S.E. wind, good and strong; but it forced us to use the towing rope till half-past two o’clock, when we sail from S. to S.S.W. Constant north winds, such as are blowing at this moment in Khartùm, do not occur here at this time; however, this everlasting change of wind is, at times, advantageous to us, from the extremely varying course of the river. The wind falls—the drum beats for libàhn, when the wind from N.E. allows us again to stretch sail, in order to go to the south. This is, however, but a short pleasure, and the rope is obliged to be had recourse to, when we go, about half-past three, east by south; where, right and left, is a village in the reeds.