We halted at the left shore to wait for the oxen and sheep which the Baghàras had promised to bring, but these brothers in Mohammed, were too well acquainted with our Abu Daoud, Suliman Kashef, who would have dispensed with any payment, and therefore they did not shew themselves. “Naas batalin” (bad people) they were called,—and we navigate in the afternoon further to N.E., and wind to E., where the isolated Mountain Defafaùngh, hanging over the river, sets me on tenterhooks of expectation. Here I shall see pyramids and enormous walls, for the whole rock is said to be formed of burnt bricks (Top achmer). This might have been, therefore, the halting point for the archæology of the Ethiopian world. I must set out on my travels early in the morning and sketch the outlines of its ruins, even if I catch a fever that may continue several days. _8th April._—I was on my feet before daybreak, and woke, as usual, my men from their heavy sleep; I drank a strengthening draught of yemen, and set off with Thibaut, Sabatier, and three servants, one of whom carried a goat’s skin, containing water, to the mysterious mountain which, as the final end of Egyptian or Ethiopian civilization, the first or last power of human art, may afford so much _éclaircissement_ to science. Cheerful and brisk—for the sun had not yet risen—I walked with the ostrich and crane, as I called Thibaut and Sabatier, on account of their quick strides, through the Ambak wood, and the long grass of the Savannah-prairie, which was partly burning under our feet. But soon the depressed land of an old river, with standing water therein, lay between us and the foot of Mount Defafaùngh. We perceived by some trees here, on a level with the shore of the Nile, that the water had risen four feet high—what a lake, then!—and, therefore, the Ambak was lying dry, and its root bent and feeble. Arnaud was advancing far behind us, with the military escort given to us for our protection, which we thought we could do without. When we saw armed natives at a little distance from where we stood, my two Frenchmen made a show of courage, but seemed to me to hide their fear under the cloak of joking. It would have been disgraceful to stop and wait for Arnaud, and so one after the other rode upon the shoulders of our strongest servants, to whom a comrade gave his hand, so that he might not stick in the clay soil and morass, and we crossed in this manner a narrow gohr, leaving the little lake and the standing pools at our left.