Having watered our animals at a shallow stream, spreading out in the meadow-ground, we continued our march, and about half an hour before noon had to cross a very difficult swamp, with boggy ground, where several of our people stuck fast. The whole of this region is subject to partial inundations; but it seems very remarkable that they do not attain their greatest height in, or at the end of, the rainy season, but several months later; and I found afterwards, when I traversed this country again towards the end of August, in the very height of the rainy season, that not only this but the other swamps were considerably lower than they were in March. This circumstance depends on the peculiar nature of the Tsád, which reaches its highest level in November, when all the waters carried down by the several rivers and torrents have spread over the whole surface of the lagoon, while the loss from evaporation is then much less than during the hot months. Continuing through a very thick forest full of herds of wild hogs, which seem greatly to delight in these low, swampy, and densely overgrown grounds on either side of the (river) Shárí, and having passed another swamp, and the forest at length clearing, we obtained a sight of the high clay walls of the town of Kála, starting forth from a beautiful grove of fig-trees, and overtowered by a very lofty, but slightly inclined solitary palm-tree. [Footnote 23: Ébn Khaldún, texte Arabe, vol. i. p. 200.; trad. S. Macguckin de Slane, vol. ii. p. 116.] [Footnote 24: Makrízi, in Hamaker, Spec. Catal. p. 206., كاتكوا.] [Footnote 25: I repeat here what I have stated, I think, in another place, that in my opinion the Yédiná are meant by Makrízi’s اتعنا.] CHAP. XLVII. PROVINCE OF LOGÓN. — LOGÓN BÍRNI.