We then kept close along its eastern side, having a rising ground on our left, with a most splendid border of beautiful trees, chiefly of the fig kind. It was a scenery which reminded me of the Músgu country, with this exception, that the watercourse was not so broad, and the rich foliage of the trees was not occasionally broken and diversified by the deléb- palm. An almost uninterrupted line of hamlets skirted this narrow strip of verdant fertility, and now and then groups of people were seen issuing from the thick foliage, while numerous herds of cattle were spread over the green swampy meadow-lands, some half-immersed in the water, and nipping off the fresh shoots of the young grass, while others were roaming about on the dry herbage near the border. Amongst the cattle, birds of the most beautiful plumage, and of every description and size, were sporting and playing about: there was the gigantic pelican dashing down occasionally from some neighbouring tree; the maraboo (_Ciconia M._), standing like an old man, its head between its shoulders; the large-sized azure-feathered “dédegamí,” strutting proudly along after its prey, the plotus, with its long snake-like neck; the white ibis, eagerly searching for its food, with various species of ducks (geddégabú, or “dabá”), and numerous other lesser birds in larger or smaller flights. Now and then a wild hog suddenly started forth from the covert of the forest, accompanied by a litter of young ones, and plunged eagerly into the water. There was here a rich and inexhaustible field for the sportsman; but I could not think of sport, for I was conscious that something was going on to stop my progress. Perhaps it would have been more prudent to have gone on without stopping; but I felt the heat of the sun very much, and, seeing that I could not traverse the country by force, preferred resting during the heat of the day under the shade of a fine wide-spreading ngábbore or ngáto (fig-tree) at the side of a Shúwa village. I here endeavoured in vain to barter a few things with the inhabitants; but, to my great astonishment, neither milk nor anything else was to be had, though cattle were seen grazing in every direction. But the people told me that the great number of cattle collected together on so narrow a slip of pasture-ground was the very reason they had so little milk. These Shúwa people, who belong to the tribe of the Welád ʿAlí, call this shallow water Msél el Háj ʿAlí, after the name of their principal chief.