Half-past three. Towards S. We have a tolerably high and apparently planted island at our left, and halt at the right near a hill—probably a deserted domicile. But look there! that is really the far-famed Sobàt, the water of which is flowing against us, and which is so much feared by the crew, who are tired of the voyage. I soon disembarked on the shore, sauntered up the hill, and was surprised to find that I could see so far in the distance, and fed my eye and mind with a diorama which extended from W. to N.E. The Nile is conspicuous in the W., and meanders to N.E., where it is lost to the sight. An isolated dhellèb-palm on the right shore indicates this last boundary. The horizon behind this glittering length of the Nile is adorned with a transparent forest of dome-palms, interspersed with slender dhellèb palms, with their small heads. The basin of a lake spreads from W. to N.W., at my feet, and the river Sobàt winding downwards from S.E., and flowing in the depth at my right, unites with the Nile near the lake: both its shores are bare, and only a few melancholy straw tokuls stand on the extreme point of the right shore. All the remaining part of the district extends far and wide in a dead waste, with a little withered grass; and the horizon alone from S.S.W. to S.W., displays afar some palms and other trees, through which the blue sky glistens. The lake lying in the angle between the left shore of the Sobàt and the right of the White Stream is connected with the former by a narrow opening, evidently prevented from closing by the hand of man. The mouth, as is the case elsewhere, is merely stopped up by reeds, to keep the fish of the lake in confinement. Our blacks shewed on this occasion what they do to catch fish when the water of these lakes is shallow, and does not reach up to a man’s middle. They disturb it with their feet, put fishing or conical baskets into it, and harpoon the large fish, who come to the top to breathe. The Sobàt, swelling at high water far higher and stronger, has raised unquestionably a dam against this lake, the former river-bed of the White Stream, and pressed the Nile more towards N.W. into its present bed. Notwithstanding such an advantage being at hand, the natives have cut through the dam for the purpose of catching fish. The Sobàt has shortly before its mouth a hundred and thirty mètres in breadth and three fathoms in depth, whilst when we were here before it was four fathoms; and according to Selim Capitan, a few days earlier last year, five fathoms. We can tell but very little generally of the depth of the Nile, because its bed is very uneven, and the stream causes eternal fluctuations.