I was sorry that I had, in my hurry, omitted to bring a glass bead or two with me, in order that I might have made these good women quite happy. The walls of the tokuls were low, and plastered with clay, though the pointed roofs were, as usual, of straw. Skins were lying on the ground, and gourd-shells and vessels of black clay standing around, but there was neither merissa nor milk to be discovered in them; and I must say, I laughed not a little, when Sale, who is so devoted to merissa, put a gara to his mouth, in the greatest delight, thinking he had found some. It was urine, which they are in the habit of collecting from cows, and mixing with milk, as a drink, which I learned subsequently from our blacks. This is considered wholesome, as there is no salt here. A number of short stakes were driven into the ground near the village, for the cattle to be fastened to; and the women made us understand by signs that the beasts were a long distance from here. An immense number of birds were perched around the pools; amongst them also ducks and sand-pipers, but we could not get within shot of them. The latitude 6° 34′, east longitude, from Paris 28° 32′. The thermometer in the morning 16°, and at noon, 25°. The women must have reported well of our friendly intentions; for when we returned to the vessels, we found there some natives, who had probably washed the ashes from themselves, for they were quite black. Very little notice was taken of them by the Turks, because they had not brought with them any cattle. These people were more like trees than men; I perceived with them also the artificial wrinkles on the forehead, being the insignia of the nation of the Keks, which I had overlooked in the former visitors, owing either to the dirt or the ashes. At three o’clock the drum beat, and I really thought that it was a joke; but it was not so, for it was supposed that there was reason to believe all our negroes intended to desert. We towed our vessels, therefore, further to the S.; for Hüsseïn Aga had also returned with his fifty men without having effected his object. At four o’clock we had, on the left, a long village, the tokul roofs of which were without under-walls. The right shore is elevated here four to five feet above the height of the Nile, and has only scanty grass, for the Nile appears not to have inundated it. A wood at a distance, losing itself under the horizon, on the left shore; the Haba close at hand, wherein I had shot yesterday, runs with the river to the south. A faint east wind has set in, with which we slowly sail S.S.E., and make one mile. Two lakes, of which the former one is not inconsiderable, are in a line with each other between the before-named Haba and the river; the forest, with a margin of reeds before it, approaches then to the border of the river.