25th January.—At eleven o’clock we leave our island at the right shore, and halt towards the south, for the north-east wind is favourable to us. On the right and left are several little villages, and on the right shore a low foreland, which we had already visited and found very fertile. Several poison-trees stand near the village lying in the background. The bushàr and garrua have not left us, but cover the greatest part of the shore, where the thorn-bushes appear to diminish, the nearer we approach the equator. We remark the very same circumstance with respect to the mimosas, and in those that we still here and there see, the leaves are broader and seem to announce varieties or different species. Even the tamarind-tree, from which we have already gathered ripe fruit, has a different physiognomy here to what we see in the country of the Shilluks; the branches are more slender, and the larger leaves are not so thickly piled one upon the other. I was laughed at by my servant when I asked the name of this tree. We sail along the left shore, and advance three miles and a half; but one ship soon gets obstructed here, another there, and the water-track pointed out to us by the natives is really very narrow. The stream, which might previously have been about three hundred paces, is here certainly five hundred. A large island, with another smaller one, covered with durra, rises out of it. At one o’clock S.S.W., in which direction we sail now at the right shore, where the water is better than we had thought. The negroes continue to run along the shore, or in the shallow places plunge into the water, and cry as loud as they can to us to stop a little and barter with them. The right shore is planted with durra, but it is already harvested. It is a small reddish kind, giving but little meal. At the previous landing-places there were, amongst other plants, several small creeping beans, of white and red colour, thriving luxuriantly on the ground. A small island on our left. I hear, from the mast, that nineteen mountains (gùbàl) are counted, without reckoning the small ones. The chain of mountains is, properly speaking, not wooded; but that which looks like a forest, from a distance is, in reality, the fragments of rocks, with which they are nearly all studded at the base: yet between these blocks a tree and copsewood here and there thrives, which may sprout out beautifully green in the rainy season. A splendid ground, covered with trees, and inclined towards the river, approaches to the foot of the Korek, but does not probably afford the shade we suppose at a distance. The shores are not only very strongly intersected with layers of sand, but also the mould of the dam itself is completely mixed with sand. Therefore it seems that the river enters now into a rocky bed, from the mountains of which there is not much fertility to wash away.