After making a complete day of rest at Wod-Shellay, I crossed over to the western shore on a brief excursion. I entered some villages at a distance from the Nile and gained some information as to the condition of their agriculture. Wide, though much thinned, forests of the Sunt acacia (_A. nilotica_ and _arabica_) cover the districts near the shore; further on there was a wide extent of cultivated flat. The soil is a stiffish ash-grey clay, different from that of Egypt, but not inferior in fertility—an opinion which Sir Samuel Baker, not investigating the west and being acquainted only with the sandy east, has ventured to deny. A large yellow-grained variety of _Sorghum vulgare_, known in the Khartoom markets as “soffra,” thrives here in such perfection that but few ears came under my notice which were not at least nine inches long and more than four in diameter; convincing evidence to me of the fruitful nature of the ground. I was accompanied by Arslan, a great sheep-dog, which I had brought with me from Europe, and in all the villages through which I passed the inhabitants, as I advanced, scampered off in terror, crying “Hyæna, hyæna!” It was difficult to make them understand that the brown-spotted animal was only a dog. I do not think I know a country where the dread of great dogs is so universal as in the Soudan. But a few years ago unlimited forests here met the stranger’s eye; the large demand for timber for ship-building purposes, however, has all but destroyed them. At Wod-Shellay, in Mohammed Ali’s time, the Government maintained a large dock, on which were built the numerous boats which that enterprising ruler sent out into the upper districts; at present there is a similar establishment higher up the stream upon the Isle of Aba, where the stores of wood are awhile secured to meet the demands of the future. Scarcely one tree out of a hundred yields timber suitable for building: and all along the bank the owners like to pay their taxes by means of wood instead of money; the consequence naturally is that the best trees are prematurely lost and that old trees are comparatively rare. The steamboat service on these waters is much assisted by the inexhaustible supply of fuel which is everywhere to be procured along the banks. [Sidenote: MOUNT ARRASH-KOL.] Our voyage was next continued, through the night, as far as a watering-place on the western shore, near which lay the village of Turra. We lay-to in sight of the neighbouring mountain Arrash-kol. The hippopotamuses now became more frequent; their noise, gurgling, and snorting was heard far over the waters, and grated as harshly on the ear as the incessant creaking of our own rudder. The traveller up the White Nile must accustom himself to this, or he has no hope of an undisturbed night’s rest.