It is a strangely beautiful sight to see these exuberant plants, sparkling in various colours, keeping down the more sturdy ones. However, on our voyage back, the scene had so altered, that it was with difficulty we could persuade ourselves that here it was so wonderfully beautiful before. Together with the various species of convolvulus, the blooming ambak-tree contributed to enhance the variety of flowers. The Arabs call it ambak, although they are only acquainted with its dry light wood, which floats down to them. The tree grows only in the river itself, or in a swamp, and when the water recedes, dies away to the root. The rapidity of its growth surpasses that of the rising of the Nile, and shoots up from ten to fifteen feet above its highest water-mark. It rises in a conical form out of the water, but decreases again towards the root, and is, in the middle, as thick as a strong man’s arm. The wood is throughout of a spongy nature, and can be called only fibrous pith: it is overlaid with a dark green rind, which is also furnished with a rough brownish hue and small imperceptible arcuated thorns. The branches fix themselves on luxuriant soil, like the acacias with us, and towards the ends are quite green and rough; the leaves are twinned like those of the acacia; the foliage is full of sap and green like reeds. The yellow bean-flower grows single, but in great profusion; it is an inch and a half long and broad, and has ten stamina round the pistil. The top of a mountain, of which, at the moment, I could learn no other name than that of Geb’l Dinka, rose, about nine o’clock, to the S.S.W. This was a welcome sight to me, as it seemed to promise, from the distance, something more magnificent than the hills, or would-be mountains, that had hitherto appeared in the horizon. We make four miles and a half, and the rapidity of the stream still remains one mile, although the water before this Machada seems to have no fall, and only to be set in motion by the pressure from above. At two o’clock we had on the left, towards the east, Geb’l Dinka, so termed by navigators, but more correctly called Geb’l N’jemati, which is said to denote a group of mountain tops. Two rocky ridges especially project, and seem to belong to the granite formation.