We determined on remaining here the next day, and ordered the tents to be pitched under the shade of an immense tamarind tree, about two hundred and fifty yards from the bank of the river. The water was sweet and palatable, and very gratifying to us after the lake water we had been drinking for the last few days, though that was nectar in comparison with the well-water near Kouka. The shoals of fish that rushed quite close to, and sometimes on, the shore, exceeded any thing I ever could have supposed, both as to size and numbers: we waded, nearly up to our knees, to a little island or sand-bank about ten yards from the land, and found the marks of two good-sized crocodiles quite fresh. Close to the bank, and just at the hollow of a slight curve in the river’s course, fourteen years ago stood the town of Gambarou, the chosen place of residence of the late and former sultans of Bornou; and the ruins now standing give a proof of the buildings having been, for this country, of a princely kind: the walls of a mosque, which were more than twenty yards square, are still visible, and those of the sultan’s house, with gates opening to the river, still remain; a private mosque appears also to have been attached to the sultan’s residence: the buildings were all of brick, and must have had a superior appearance to any town we had seen in Africa: the situation was beautiful, and although labyrinths of thickets and brambles now overspread the banks of the river, while wild plants and useless grass were in the meadows, yet I was assured that the whole neighbourhood of Gambarou was once in a superior state of cultivation; and that in the old sultan’s time, boats were constantly moving to and from Kabshary and other towns to the west. Kouka was at that time not in being, and Angornou but a small parcel of huts.