_Now_, when I see from these heights of downs, which are sufficiently elevated to enable me to look over a low surface of earth, the left shore lying level with the water-line itself, I am no longer surprised at not having found any limits for the border of the Nile, on our ascent. But it is exactly on this account that I take it to be impossible, with the present state of the Nile, that those morass hills (for the constituent parts are and remain nothing else but morass, mixed and rolled on by other powers than the present), could be formed, even at the highest water-mark, under present circumstances. Yet the latter have been always the same since the land became dry, and the left shore was still lower than it is at present. But now the river has full play, and it cannot therefore rise high, as the appearance of the hills of earth teach us themselves. If there lay here, however, a shallow lake, through which the current of the Nile flowed, then morass-hills might have been formed to the height of the highest water-mark. And this is what I believe. The Downs still continue for a good tract, and are lost imperceptibly, again to emerge under the very same appearance. Arnaud wants to have the hippopotamus-skin dressed again; it is extended on the sand, but it diffuses a very bad smell, and he retains therefore only its head. We must remain here till noon for the sake of this important business, and because Arnaud _will_ make observations. Then a somewhat favourable but faint wind gets up: we navigate henceforth almost N. and N.W. In the afternoon the piles of earth, thrown up by the waters of the lake, are visible on the right side of the Nile, similar to those I have seen in the lake-caldron of Taka. At dusk reefs are seen in the river: they appear to me to be limestones, and extend from the granite bank of Syene across the river from E. to W. At one time they might have carried on their backs beautiful islands, as the granite reefs also previously seen, which took the road of the lake, and perhaps settled themselves again at the Delta. We see that the White River finds opposition also here, and has found still more, from which its slow current is confined by itself. We navigate till late at night as far as Mount Mussa or Brane, from which I procure specimens of stones of the chert species, and remain there. Thermometer, 22°, 30° to 33°, 21°.