The leader of the chorus leads the choir, and the multitude answers with fearful vigour. A troop of _élites_, assembled before the crowd, run in close column backwards and forwards,—their leader at their head, commanding them, and holding a pole, on the top of which an animal’s tail was fastened, clearly in order to give us a warlike representation. But they bring several heads of cattle to the shore. These are reasonable men: we have, in truth, no meat, and the sailors crack the rough lubiën-pods and the durra-stalks like sugar-canes. Real garden warblers are these Arabs, and all the blacks. Selim Capitan has already reached the island, whilst we remain fixed on the sand until I wake up the captain. I hear the sailors gasping forth “eh lissa,” but I know this simulating of extreme exertion, when each man trusts to the other one working. At half-past two o’clock we pushed on through the left arm of the Nile over to the island, where there was a great huzzaing and joy on the vessels touching land. Again they brought three oxen, and a splendid barter took place. Besides fowls, goats, and sheep, they bring a quantity of elephants’ teeth, panthers’, leopards’ and monkeys’ skins, little stools, iron buckles, ivory bracelets, weapons, lubiën, small water-melons, woollen war-caps, iron necklaces, strings twisted together of little shining black fruits, fixed like beads, &c. The people are very friendly, and willing to oblige, and I might say, more cultivated than those of Bari. We are on the large island called after the name of the neighbouring great village Buko. The latter contains more than five hundred tokuls. I hear, to my astonishment, that the nation here is not called Bamber, but Buko, and that the tribe of the Bambers has its boundaries before this island, and is only a small race, like the Korreji, or Korreschi, who are said to dwell above the Bambers, and may have originated from Mount Korreji in Barì. It seems that these Bukos are of one race with the Bambers, Tshièrrs, and Liènns, for they have generally their foreheads dotted. The formation of the face, and other physical qualities—the large and moderate stature, also speak in favour of a common origin and subsequent separation. The arm of the Nile wherein we lie, and which we shall navigate, is called Kirboli; the right and narrow arm on the other side of the island, towards N., Kirti. Selim Capitan requests me to accompany him to the Kirti. We went down it in the sandal for the distance of half an hour, and found its breadth to be seventy-five metres, by the assistance of the rope which was drawn across it through one of the plundered sürtuks. As far as we can see, this arm goes, with slight declinations to E. and W., entirely to N., which direction the natives also gave. According to this it would be our nearest road, but its water is unknown, and it is not thought safe to let the lighter vessels take this short cut.