_2nd April._—Some Shilluks from the neighbouring village were on the shore, but drew back a short distance when they saw me coming. I had experienced a violent perspiration in the night, for we had yesterday evening 30° Reaumur in our cabin, where not a breath of air was stirring, and therefore, being in a perspiration, I had just now thrown over me my burnus, under which certainly a gun might be very easily concealed. The Shilluks are not generally timid, especially if they be in a body. It were, in truth, too much to expect that they should prove their courage, in a small troop and armed merely with shield and spear, against guns that hit at a distance, and send invisible and inevitable death. Their little floating vessels, which we see so frequently standing against the trees on the shore, serving as fishing-boats, and also for crossing to the opposite side, consist in the Nile merely of a bundle of reeds, and have the form of a flat skiff, obtuse at the stern, because the ambaks are joined together at the slender end, and tied in three or four layers one over the other to make the vessel broader behind: there are two holes at the bottom for the feet. They go quickly, and a long flat oar is used to propel them along, as in the other boats: their name is generally with the Arabs, toff, and with the Baràbras, geïhga. The ambak rafts that come from Sennaar, or Rossères to Khartùm, are large, and carry a freight of one hundred ardepps of durra. A little wood approached this morning also on the right to the shore, but having no trees like that of the left shore. I thought previously that the Haba of the Shilluks was scanty, but I have altered my opinion by ocular inspection: the trees must appear thin, even at a short distance, for the stunted thick stems generally stood in the water. Iron is very rare among the Shilluks as in all Bellet Sudan, notwithstanding the proximity of Kordofàn; and it does not seem that the kingdom of Bari has ever provided Ethiopia and Egypt with iron, for very few instruments and arms made of this metal are found among the antiquities, but, on the contrary, they are of brass and other metals. The use of iron, however, is very ancient, and perhaps a black Tubal Cain may have hammered there long before the tribe accumulated, sufficiently to shew the characteristics of a nation. If an Ethiopian tribe descended from Bari, it possibly kept up a communication with the iron country, from the want of iron in Nubia, though perhaps not by a direct road; or if only a tradition of iron-mines existed, a Rhamses or some other great king, might have followed and traced them out; for the White River was just as accessible as at present, and the vessels of that age would have found more room for sailing,—that is, supposing a Dædalus had discovered also sails for Egypt, which we may suppose to be the case from their sea-voyages, and which is also confirmed by the hieroglyphics.