So, also, the beautiful fine-grained salt, brought from thence to Bari, is not the rock-salt of the desert, but is extracted from the brackish water and slime, according to the form of the vessels in which it has been boiled. I have seen, however, in the great tract of country between the lower Atbara and the Red Sea, that a land subject to tropical rains—although, as in Africa, without rivers and streams—can provide, even in the dry season, men and animals with water from its earthly womb—that is, from the torrents and water-tanks. The Anthropophagi, also living on the mountain-chain by Logojà, in the neighbourhood of Bari, have not any running water; but they take it from the ground: namely, from natural cisterns or cavities. We had all believed that the White Stream must come from the _East_; therefore our enquiries about that side were more careful: but not all our signs towards the East could bring back the Natives from the South, the true source of the Stream. I remember still quite well that I wrote this down immediately, and laid it before the Geographical Society, in Berlin, some years before there was any talk of the various sources described by D’Abbadie. Moreover, it seems to follow from the whole configuration of the line of mountains, that Nature has fixed here a water-shed to the East as well as to the West; for the mountain chains of Logojà and Kùgelu stretch from East and West to South, probably as branches of a mighty mountain-stock under the Equator, from which the streams of the Bach’r-el-Abiad issue. Although M. d’Arnaud, my companion during the voyage on the White Stream, says that the latter is navigable for a “cinquante de milles” from the island of Tshànker, and arbitrarily makes the _main arm_ of the smaller rivulet of the Nile spring from the east; yet this is either only the remnant of our old affection for the _easterly_ descent of the river; or it may be the result of a want of truthfulness. I challenge Thibaut and Sabatier, his own countrymen, to come forward and state whether there was ever any talk about such a main-arm as he describes. According to Làkono, who had been there, and called the land wherein the source lies by the name of Anjan, the water in the _four_ brooks, by the conflux of which the White Nile is formed, reached _only up to the ankles_. This land, however, lay to the south, as my travelling companions must remember, and which Arnaud also allows, as I will afterwards prove. Now if we would follow for at least 5° towards the north such a Nile brook, from this county of Anjan to the Forest of Babia, in order to be extraordinarily complaisant to M. d’Abbadie, who might rely upon Arnaud, we should not find, even with a microscope, the silver threads of his sources.