behind the barricade of my chests, in order to keep watch during the night with the Circassians and Turks. Notwithstanding we were all very tired, I was fully persuaded that those Muslims would watch, as they had brought with them as slaves some pretty brown girls, whom they had purchased in the camp of Kassela, out of the booty of Mount Basa. The following day we crossed over to the other side. My Hamàl, or camel-servant, Hammed, took his great favourite camel himself by the rope and swam before it; but he soon returned back to me disconsolate, for his murkeb (ship), as he called it, caught by the strong current, had broken the cord, which was made of the bark of a tree, just as he had found a favourable resting-place upon a sand-bank close by. Nevertheless, he trusted every thing to the size and sagacity of his beast, and immediately disappeared from my side. On the following evening I saw him again in Gos Rajeb, but without murkeb. I voluntarily belonged to the last party that crossed,—two old Turks, a Kurd, and myself with my servants. On the moment of pushing off, some Arabs sprang on my chests, but the tall stout Kurd, whom Suliman Kashef had sent over to me as a Charon that might be entirely depended upon, struck two of them into the water at the same time with his oar as if with a flyflap, by which the miserable skiff was nearly upset. At the head of this boat sat the Kurd in great state, in shirt and breeches; on the luggage was enthroned Sale from Mahass, his ferda thrown loose over his shoulders, enjoying himself on merissa (a kind of beer). At my feet squatted the Turks upon the wet planks, in full dress, with heavy pistols in their girdles; behind them, on the brim of the obtuse stern, I had my place, dressed in a light gauze shirt, so that if the wind came on and threatened to drown the others, I might not, in case of necessity, be looked upon and seized as a raft. Certainly this Kurd, who was very much relied on for his skill on the water, had assured me, _on his head_, that I might, in case of an accident, ride upon him, as upon a river buffalo (gamùss el Bah’r—hippopotamus); but I preferred to depend on myself, and the more so, because the Atbara is not broader than the Rhine at Bonn. The Turks said their prayers, shook their heads involuntarily at every stroke of the oar, to which they calmly resigned themselves as their directing fate; for this vibrating motion of the turbans, which are set generally on decayed vertebral columns, always takes place, especially in steam-vessels. My corpulent hippopotamus, the Kurd, laughed and made fun at them whilst moving round the sand-banks and along the steep broken shore, without their answering him a single word.