Two o’clock.—E. by N.; twenty-one dhellèb-palms on the left, with a pastoral hamlet of thirty new straw-tokuls. The crew are beginning to shoot down the dhellèb-fruits, and I also disembark on the shore, beyond which the ground, with the beautiful group of trees, is still imperceptibly elevated. We are quite comfortable there, but I gaze far and wide for a point to break the unbounded flat waste that shews not a thorn or a bush; the river winds melancholy between the naked shores. These palms stand in luxuriant growth,—a proof that the soil is capable of other things, and may look for a better future. The very pretty straw-huts present nothing worth having to our rapacious eyes, and near them we remark the sleeping-places, and a large, glimmering heap of dung, serving at night for fire and a bed. The cow-dung is collected in little heaps in the enclosure, surrounded with palings, where the beast is tied, and is still quite fresh: notwithstanding this, it is very certain that we expect in vain the return this evening of these beautifully spotted cattle. Standing on an old trunk of a tree, I remarked a large village on the right shore at a quarter of an hour up the river. The dhellèb-tree has the same fibrous texture of bark, and of the interior of the trunks, as the dates and dome-palms; but it is far finer, thicker, and stronger. The outside of the bark shews rings from below upwards, and the tree itself shoots forth slenderly from the earth, and swells gradually towards the centre to a spheroid form, when it decreases again to the top, and rises stately, separating the head from the stem. The fruit is as large as a child’s head, and in clusters, as in the palms before named, but on far stronger stalks, from which it hangs down immediately close to the stem. It is smooth outside, and of a golden colour, like its pulp; the latter is fibrous, of a bitter-sweet taste, like chewing soft wood and leaves behind in the mouth an astringent taste, which may arise here from the fruit not being fully ripe. There are from four to six kernels in this gold apple of the size of a child’s hand, or of those of the dome-palms: the stalk has a scaly covering, surrounding about a third part of the fruit. The kernels, or the nuts, have themselves a solid pulp, shining like dark glass, being exactly similar to that of the dome-fruit: at first it is like milk, but on coming to maturity becomes of the consistency of horn. The trunk of palms is surrounded with the same kind of rings as the date-tree, the rind feeling smooth, like planed wood; consequently it was impossible to climb these trees to gather any fruit, owing principally to the swelling in the centre, and therefore it was shot down. After several attempts, we drove large nails in the stem, to hold the rope by, and then we ascended gradually.