_Nov. 27th._—Here, on the borders of the Arabian dominions, we waited in vain for a courier from the Basha, fearing lest he should have changed his intention with respect to the expedition. I passed a very bad night. In the middle of the most profound sleep, I was awakened by a fall in the cabin. My good Feïzulla Capitan, the commander of my vessel, had tumbled on the ground from his tolerably high place of rest opposite to me. I thought I heard the death-rattle, and saw by the light of the lantern, that the froth was standing in his mouth, which was firmly closed. The servant very coolly said to me, “Mabegaff!” (don’t be afraid). It was the first time that I had tried to open the hands of a person struck with epilepsy, but upon my doing so, he soon came to himself, to the astonishment of the crew; towards morning, however, he had two more fits. I now learnt, not to my great consolation, that he had from youth upwards suffered this affliction, and that it frequently returned. But my night’s rest was disturbed, and I sat myself on my Bamber before the door, where the sentry very quietly slept. When this fit came on Feïzulla, I sprang to him, without any one else having troubled themselves about him, because he was too good and indulgent to the men. Hard drinking, together with the heat, had contributed perhaps, chiefly to the violence of this attack. The air was cool, compared with the heat of the day, and the profound stillness of the night was very impressive, through the soft uniform rippling of the water on the stern of our ships; but the snoring of the crew, who were lying pell-mell, was insufferable. I had a peculiar feeling of loneliness and abandonment, not lessened by the reflection that I was on the White Nile,—this stream, the source and course of which had appeared a riddle for centuries to all cultivated nations. As a half-forgotten tradition descending to our days from the infancy of the human race, impels us to explore the Nile, so our expedition is, in the main, nothing but a continuation of the endeavours of the Priests of the Nile, the Pharaohs, the Phœnicians, the Greeks under the Ptolemies, and the Romans under Cæsar and Nero. It is as if mankind in general, like a single individual, were ever seeking anew, with unabated desire, the sources with which the first awakening to intellectual consciousness is connected.