_1st January_, 1841.—Welcome new year! Oh ye beautiful past times! Dance and the girls—Wine and friends.—I could not sleep; the sentinels sang, and told stories of spirits, snakes, and unbelievers, accompanied by abuse of the gnats. I thought of my brother in Taka, who at the present moment did not even know it was Sylvester’s evening, for there we had lost the computation of time, both having different dates in our journals. This was also the case with the Italian physician, Dr. Bellotti, who took the greatest delight however in the new moon, because the arrears of his salary increased with it. It occurred to me that my brother and I, when we had nearly lost our memory, after a severe illness, had even contended about the date of the year. Midnight had long passed, and I was just on the point of falling asleep, when Thibaut, who had continued his libations in honour of St. Sylvester, shouted out a “Happy New Year to you!” We sailed from sun-rise to seven o’clock, in a southern direction, with a faint north-east wind. We halt on the left side of that large island, near which Selim Capitan returned the evening before yesterday, to navigate the left instead of the right arm. Here, on the right shore, our stream takes up in S.S.E. by E., a small, but strongly-flowing river, or an arm of the Nile; in the latter signification it is called, without any further ceremony, a gohr. Ash-grey negroes come to the shore and bring us some cattle. Both their chiefs or Sheiks are called Arwor and Albisùg: their neighbouring village bears, to my astonishment, the name of Bonn. We presented them with glass beads, and threw some on the ground for the others, without their quarrelling or fighting for them. The stream we traverse is called by them Kir, and the arm before mentioned Muts; the former is said to be very circuitous. A little before ten o’clock we sail with a good north-east wind to S.E., and immediately to S. As we see here, the arm of the Nile comes from the east.