It is surprising that I nowhere see any elephants’ tusks, though said to be so common here. About half past ten o’clock, S.S.E. On the right a lake, running tolerably even with the river, narrow at its southern point, more than an hour long, and three-quarters of an hour broad. The Haba, with its videttes of old shores behind, draws nearer before us. The right shore is a vast semicircle, circumscribed by isolated trees, with many green grass-plats, pools, ambaks, and a kind of acacia, with yellow clusters of flowers, like the gold-rain of the laburnum. To judge from the many pools, the river does not appear yet to have receded entirely, although the nearest shore-land is already burnt away, right and left. We sail half an hour, but the northern wind is too faint, and we come to its assistance by towing. The stream is about five hundred paces broad, and does not seem here to receive any tributaries. A number of birds of prey pursue our vessels, in order, by a bold attack, to seize the meat strung on lines. We know, even at a distance, when a village is deserted, because it is immediately taken possession of by these legions of the air, and rummaged in all corners, in a very impudent manner. The natives on both shores have here directly at hand another free and worthy position. _A long village_, on the right shore, was by way of a joke called Dennap (tail). The first group consisted of thirty-five tokuls, on elevated ground; we only saw there old women and two old men. Our sailors, who were towing, immediately shot at the vultures whirling round over us through the village—forced open the doors of the huts, made of reeds or animal skins, and stole the hides lying there for beds, and whatever else was near. My loud abuse and threats brought them, however, into something like reason. This tokul group was followed by a double and threefold row of tokuls, about one hundred and twenty in number, on the high border of the river; therefore it had the appearance of an artificial dam, but may perhaps have been elevated gradually by the rudera of the tokuls themselves. A herdsman’s village joined on to the tokuls, numbering only thirty-one huts, and some square sheds, the flat reed-roofs of which were covered with earth and ashes. Negroes sat under them to be protected from the sun, and allowed us quietly to draw near, without making “Fantasie,” as our men wished. We stop near the village till three o’clock: its inhabitants appear mostly to have fled. We then advance for a time libàhn, and halt again, without any object.