here, O Reis Dab!” cried he, “and skin your timsah. Stop, I will do it for you.” And he holds up to our astonished eyes a sheepskin. How crestfallen was the pilot, and how the others joked him! It was a chicken-coop covered with a sheepskin, containing three putrid chickens, which had fallen from some dahabeeáh, and, carried by the current on the bank, became embedded there, and was left high and dry when the waters receded. We have a number of pets on board: a live turtle, a soft-shelled fellow, in color like the mud of its own Nile; a hawk who does not reciprocate our friendship, and snaps at us when we go near him; six chameleons—what strange creatures these are! We have had some twenty of them at different times. As far as we could observe, they ate nothing, and yet throve well as long as we were in their own latitudes. As we returned towards the north they died one after the other. The chameleon is formed somewhat like a lizard, about eight inches in length. Their feet look like a mittened hand—that is to say, a large toe corresponds to the thumb, and the rest of the foot, being solid, appears like the hand enclosed in a mitten. They have very large heads compared with their bodies, and eyes like a frog. They change their color, and, under my own observation, made the changes from light green to yellow, black, brown, blue, and dark green. We would tease them sometimes, and, when irritated, yellow spots would appear over their bodies, and they would try to bite us as we placed our fingers in their large mouths. Their favorite pastime was to climb to the top of a palm branch fastened in the deck; here the first one would remain. The second would hang from the tail of the first, and the third support himself from the second in the same manner. In this position they would remain for hours. If another one wanted to reach the top of the branch, he would crawl deliberately up the backs of the others, who regarded this conversion of themselves into public highways with perfect indifference. Sometimes one of them would roam away and be lost for a day or two, and then be accidentally found in the centre of a basket of tomatoes or on the summit of the main-yard.