The land of Sennaar, to the west side of which we are now sailing, is called through the whole country _par excellence_ Gesira, the Island, for it is taken for one by the people, and is designated also a land by the latter word, as Meroë was once, and indeed from the very same cause. But if we speak of the city of Meroë, the ruins of which we may assume to be in the plain on the Nile under Shendy, where the villages of Gebelabe, Marùga, Dengèla, and Bahr-auie are—this place was certainly situated upon an island. The low country towards the pyramids down to the village Maruga, where a canal filled with mud now disembogues into the Nile, would plainly shew this, if a bed of rocks, perhaps intended to separate the sacred city from the great churchyard, were not just before that heap of rubbish, on which is pointed out the forge, or the heavy scoriæ of metals, said to have been wrought by the powerful Kafr Ibn Omàli el Kebir. The names also of the two villages Bahr-auie, (not Begrauie and Bigrauie, as the Egyptians and Kenuss pronounce it,) and Ma-ruga, refer to water, in the same manner as Dengela perhaps does to a fortress; Dongola, also, is called in old writings Dengela, or Tongul, (according to old Sheikh Hampsa in Hannak, who is well read.) The hills of ruins of Meroë _in complexu_, are called Geb’l Omàli, and the Pyramids, which the ass-drivers in Kahira call Piramill and Paramill, are called here Taralib, and Tarabill, as at Geb’l Barkal. In the latter place, I heard from the Faki Mohammed in Abhdom, who has inherited rare manuscripts from his father in Meraui, that the true name is Tarable, indisputably from Turab, _sing._ Tura, a grave; if not from Troab, a stone. Lastly, as to the Pyramids of Assúr, as those in Meroë or Geb’l Omali are called in Europe, the Sheikh of Maruga knew them only as Chellal el Aschùr above Metemma. With these people we are always right, if whilst asking one of them we chose to fit some name to a place where ruins are found, however corrupt it may be. This is partly politeness, as I have seen again and again in “Piramill;” partly, they believe, also, that we, as the descendants of those Kafirs who built such towers, must know better than they, where we have to seek for the buried treasures.