The ramifications above the mouth of the Bahr-el-Arab are very complicated, and must be very imperfectly traced on our present maps. The map issued by Lejean has many details, but must be accepted with caution, and requires us to remember that paper is patient of error as well as of truth. Whoever has traversed the lakes (so to call them) to the west of the Bahr-el-Arab, has, almost immediately beyond the mouth of the Dyoor, come upon the winding channel known as “the Kyt.” The shores of the Kyt are firm; there are detached groups of papyrus driven by the wind sometimes to its one bank, and sometimes to the other: its waters rise and fall, but have no other apparent motion; it widens at its extremity into a basin of papyrus, which was now open, but which in 1863 was entirely choked by ambatch. Heuglin, at that date, discerned, as he thought, in the dwindled and distorted stems a prognostication of an approaching disappearance of the ambatch; and from 1869 to 1871 there was no trace of it, Various openings are made by the water towards the west among the masses of papyrus, which enclose a labyrinth of little wooded islets.[13] One of these islands is the resting-place for the boats, and close at hand the voyagers establish their temporary camp. Being surrounded on every side by the water, all is secure from any hostile attack. The regular landing-place is on the southern shore of the basin, and thence commence the expeditions to the interior. Such is the channel which, from the times of the earliest explorers, which appear to extend from the date of Nero’s centurions, mentioned by Seneca, up to the mercantile enterprises and voyages of discoveries of the last ten years, has always brought boats to that _cul-de-sac_, called by the Nubian sailors their Meshera. The first boat, which actually entered the Gazelle, was that of a Khartoom merchant, named Habeshy, in 1854; two years later followed Consul Petherick, the first to open mercantile transactions with the tribes resident in these remote regions. At that time, when nothing was known either of the Dyoor or of the Bahr-el-Arab, it must have been no small surprise to the first explorers to see a stream so large suddenly end amongst a labyrinth of small islands, without any navigable affluent. Only by the help of a native pilot was such a discovery possible. [Illustration: The Meshera.] [Sidenote: MALARIOUS ATMOSPHERE.]