They were in a moment alongside of us; and one of them came on board, lashing his miserable raft to a rope at our stern. In recompence for their trouble, we gave them some large pieces of tobacco, and this transported them so much, that they brought us a basket, of several different kinds of fish, all small; excepting one laid on the top of the basket, which was a clear salmon-coloured fish, silvered upon its sides, with a shade of blue upon its back[101]. It weighed about 10 lib. and was most excellent, being perfectly firm and white like a perch. There are some of this kind 70 lib. weight. I examined their nets, they were rather of a smaller circumference than our casting nets in England; the weight, as far as I could guess, rather heavier in proportion than ours, the thread that composed them being smaller. I could not sufficiently admire their success, in a violent stream of deep water, such as the Nile; for the river was at least twelve feet deep where they were fishing, and the current very strong. These fishers offered willingly to take me upon the raft to teach me; but I cannot say my curiosity went so far. They said their fishing was merely accidental, and in course of their trade, which was selling these potter earthen jars, which they got near Ashmounein; and after having carried the raft with them to Cairo, they untie, sell them at the market, and carry the produce home in money, or in necessaries upon their back. A very poor œconomical trade, but sufficient as they said, from the carriage of crude materials, the moulding, making, and sending them to market, to Cairo and to different places in the Delta, to afford occupation to two thousand men; this is nearly four times the number of people employed in the largest iron foundery in England. But the reader will not understand, that I warrant this fact from any authority but what I have given him. About two o’clock in the afternoon, we came to the point of an island; there were several villages with date trees on both sides of us; the ground is overflowed by the Nile, and cultivated. The current is very strong here. We passed a village called Regnagie, and another named Zaragara, on the east side of the Nile. We then came to Caphar el Hayat, or the Toll of the Tailor; a village with great plantations of dates, and the largest we had yet seen. We passed the night on the S. W. point of the island between Caphar el Hayat, and Gizier Azali, the wind failing us about four o’clock. This place is the beginning of the Heracleotic nome, and its situation a sufficient evidence that Metrahenny was Memphis; its name is Halouan.