My servants will not get accustomed, or attend only in a very careless manner, to the shifting of my specimens of marsh plants, which cannot be too frequently done in such a damp atmosphere. They can understand stuffing (osluk) birds and other animals, for the purpose of exhibiting them in Europe for money; but to preserve gesh (grass), that is beyond their comprehension.—One o’clock. We have come from the northern direction slowly again to S.S.W., sail at half-past one o’clock round a corner of the reeds S.W., and go at two o’clock E. with the rope. At three o’clock to S., with sails, and in five minutes again Libàhn towards E. Our course became, by this eternal change, almost reduced to nothing; had it been otherwise, we might have made a good tract with the east wind. It occurred to me that it was Sylvester’s day, and I brought before my wretched mind the different Sylvester nights; how I had sometimes passed them joyfully, sometimes melancholy or quietly, ever according to the circumstances and situations in which I was placed at the time. I shouted to Thibaut, who was just passing by me, that it was Sylvester’s day, that we ought to keep the anniversary of our honest patron as a festival, and invited him to my vessel. He was afraid, however, of Feïzulla, who, reclined upon his carpet on deck, resting from his tailoring, and had one Fingàn (small cup) of date brandy after another handed to him, as if he wanted to solemnise Sylvester’s evening in his own way. I went down, therefore, to Thibaut; we drank maraschino and grog, having a coal-dish between us, over the fire of which we laid green brushwood, to protect us, in some measure, against the impudent gnats. We related anecdotes of our previous journeys in Greece, and how we, being then young, looked at the world with perfectly different eyes, and had now become old fellows, whose highest destiny would be to get an old maid or widow for a wife, on our return to our native country, and how we had lost the _so-called_ happiness when it was thrown in our way. The usual Jeremiads of incipient old bachelors. After four o’clock we sailed S.W., and then generally more to the S. It was eight o’clock when I summoned my _Dahabie_ to come close, but as if the devil had seized the helm, it went at the very same moment bang against the vessel in which the Frenchmen were; a fearful row and mutual abuse then took place, especially as all the vessels were thrown together by wind and the current, into the corner where the river makes a sudden bend from S. to S.W. It was only with much trouble that we worked ourselves loose with oars, poles, and sails, to stop about N.W. with the north-east wind. At sunset we cast anchor, north latitude 6° 52′, east longitude from Paris 28° 33′.