When arrived on the shore, he carefully separates the ends of the strings, and ties them, without straining, each to a palm branch made fast on shore, to the end of every one of which hangs a small bell. He then goes and feeds his cattle, digs ditches, or lies down and sleeps as his business calls him. The oil resists the water for some time, at last the cake begins to dissolve, pieces fall off, the broken dates dipped in the honey flow down the stream, and the large fish below catch ravenously at them as they pass. The fish follow these pieces up the stream, gathering them as they go along till they get to the cake at last, when altogether, as many as are assembled, fall voraciously to seek the dates buried in the composition; each fish that finds a date swallows it, together with an iron hook, and feeling himself fast, makes off as speedily as possible; the consequence is, endeavouring to escape from the line by which he is fastened, he pulls the palm branch, and rings the bell fastened to it. The fisherman runs immediately to the bell, and finding thereby the particular line, hauls his prisoner in, but does not kill him; the hook being large, it generally catches him by the upper jaw, which is considerably longer than the under. He then pulls him out of the water, and puts a strong iron ring through his jaw, ties a few yards of cord to it, and fastens him to the shore, so he does with the rest. Very rarely one hook is found empty. Those that want fish at Girgé, a large town opposite, or at Achmim itself, come thither as to a fish-market, and every man takes the quantity he wants, buying them alive. Fish when dead do not keep here, which makes that precaution necessary. We bought two, which fully dined our whole boat’s crew; the fisherman had then ten or twelve fastened to the shore, all of which he pulled out and shewed us. I apprehend that formerly this method of fishing was oftener practised, and better known than it is now, for I have seen, in several fishing towns, a tree, in which there was a fish with a ring through its nose, and beside it a bell. I likewise imagine that this is the fish which Mr Norden says the Kennouss caught at Syene, and which he calls a Carp; but as I have already observed, streams are not the haunt of leather-mouthed, or sucking fish, as is the carp, but rather of such as are powerfully furnished with fins, as this is, to struggle with, and traverse the current in all its directions. I believe the carp to be a fish of northern climates; I have never even seen them in these, they are certainly not in Ethiopia whence the Nile comes; their name, Cyprinus, seem to indicate they belong to Greece. They are found in the island of Cyprus, but whether exclusively from the rest of the islands is what I cannot determine.