Before I forsake the Blue Stream, I must yet remark that, besides the usual name of “Bach’r asrek,” it is called in this neighbourhood, “the Nile, or Bahr el Nil,” as I have often convinced myself. If it be asked why it is called the Nile, the answer is, because it has beautiful and good water: the old expression for this river is therefore identical with its properties. It is just the same in Egypt, where, as I found from experience, especially in Káhira, Bahr el Nil expresses the material properties of the water, for even the sakkah (water-carrier) interprets the Nile water with hellue (sweet), in opposition to cistern and brackish water. The Basha calls it also nothing but Nile, and says that certain Sheikhs have declared to him, that ignorant people call it after its blue colour. Nile means in the Arabic language indigo; otherwise this word is no longer used for a blue colour. I had an opportunity of hearing the word Nile used for inundation, together with Ba Kebir, or ruga tossiga (great water), denoting the same thing. The old expression of Nile awakes here, therefore, at the moment when it discloses itself as a divinity, a protector, and a nourisher of the country and people. Only the large pastoral Arab tribe of the Shukuriës, in the so-called Meroë, between the Blue River and the Atbara, has the peculiar name of “Adehk,” in its Aggem language for this stream, whilst the other nations in their name for it, indicate its colour. Those of Dongola, and Mahass, who both boast to be Gins betal Thin (people of the soil), call it Amanga Arumga, and Essige Rumege, and the united stream, Ruga; even the far distant Nuba negroes, the old support of the family of the Ethiopian mixture of blood, from Assuan to Rossères, call it Blue Water (Tè Uri). It is the Blue River, therefore, which possibly has imposed the name of Nile on the united stream, and might have formed the road of cultivation to nations wandering down and back again, whilst the mouth of the White Stream, retarded by lake-like shallows and swamps, was far less known. As, in addition to this, it is denied, with some justice, that fertility and good water are the property of the White River, it might have been, in the ages of antiquity, despised so much the more, and looked upon as a subordinate stream, not to be spoken of: not a single burnt brick, or other memorial, points to an earlier intercourse with it.