Early on the next morning we manned the Louisa, and rowed slowly through a gate, formed on the right by Ra’as Kululu, and on the left by a high plantation Ra’as Bannani. It led to a broad, deep basin, where two or three Sayas, small Arab vessels, not wishing to approach the town, lay at anchor. After a couple of hours, during which progress was of the mildest, we entered a narrow creek, bordered by a luxuriant growth of mangroves. The black and fœtid sea-ooze, softer than mud, which supports these forests of the sea, contrasts strangely with the gay green of their foliage, and the place was haunted by terns, grey kingfishers, and hawks of black and white robe, big as the ‘Ak-baba,’ and said to be game birds. Here and there a tall man paddled a tiny canoe, and an old slave woman went to catch fish with a body-cloth, used as a net: she suggested the venerable comparison of the letter S mounted on ‘No. 11.’ The old Arab geographers seem to have been struck by the piscatorial peculiarities of these coasts. El Idrisi (1st climate, 7th section) informs us that ‘the people supply themselves from the sea without craft or without standing upon the shore. They use, whilst swimming or diving, little nets which they themselves make of woven grass; they tie them to their feet, and by slip-knots and lashings held in their hands, they draw fast the snare when they feel that a fish has entered it. All this they do with exceeding art and with a cunning bred by long experience: they also teach land reptiles to drive their prey’—possibly the iguana. The tide, which hereabouts rises from twelve to thirteen feet, was then rapidly ebbing. At high water large boats run up under the walls of Chak-Chak; during the ebb the creek within several yards of the landing-place is a quaking bog, which receives a man to his waist. After three hours of persistent grounding, and nearly despairing to reach our mark, a sharp turn showed us the fort almost above our heads: we disembarked and waded up to the landing-place.