_23rd February._—We navigated this morning to the left shore, whereon there is a scanty Haba, in order to fetch wood and make observations. I walked to the neighbouring Haba, where I saw men in nine fishing-boats, catching fish. The lake is from forty to fifty paces in the low ground, where it stands on an equal level with the Nile, and enclosed with ambak hedges, from W. to S.E. It is a remnant of the primitive bed of the stream, perhaps itself a river-bed lately deserted, and surrounded on one side by the old shores of the Haba, which are here only five to six feet above the water, and form also the ancient left shore. From what I could see, it is about three to three and a half hours’ long, by two hundred to three hundred paces broad. It seems to derive its water from the river, and to fill with the latter, but also to supply a mass of water to it in the rainy season. It winds to S.S.E. and appears to go still further eastward. The Kèks live here very comfortably, merely on the fish they catch; but with the exception of that, they are very poor. Yet they came as proudly to us with two goats as if they had brought twenty fat oxen. They do not seem to possess cows at all, and they may be perhaps the Icthyophagi of the enclosed lake. However, we got seven elephants’ teeth, the value of which they apparently did not know, by the assistance of our interpreter. The Kèk women let the hair grow a little: the lines on their forehead extend to behind their ears; but they are fine, and frequently invisible on account of the dirt. Front and back aprons, as usual; at times, however, we see the little rahàt, or even the leathern apron over the rahàt, clearly a luxury, which the wife of Làkono also indulged in. Besides this, these women have a very _charming_ appearance owing to their chewing tobacco. There is another couple of poor villages in the neighbourhood of this place, and the men are said to have fled from it, taking their oxen with them. A quarter before five o’clock we navigate at last to the north: the Haba retreats immediately to a distance. On the right a little pastoral village, from whence we receive the two goats mentioned above. A quarter after five, to the left, N.W. by W., where there is a Haba; soon afterwards to the right N.N.W. The higher shores have disappeared with the Haba. The whole surface is scarcely two feet above the river. On the right young reeds and reed-grass.