1428 The Zoologist — November, 1868. 



rushed into my camp, shouting to my men in the darkness, 'El Bahr! 

 El Bahr!' (the river! the river!) 



" We were up in an instant, and my interpreter, Mahomet, in a 

 state of intense confusion, explained that the river was coming down, 

 and that the supposed distant thunder was the roar of approaching 

 water. Many of the people were asleep on the clean sand on the 

 river's bed ; these were quickly awaked by the Arabs, who rushed 

 down the steep bank to save the skulls of my two hippopotami that 

 were exposed to dry. Hardly had they descended, when the sound 

 of the river in the darkness beneath told us that the water had 

 arrived, and the men, dripping with wet, had just sufficient time to 

 drag their heavy burdens up the bank. 



" All was darkness and confusion ; everybody was talking and 

 no one listening, but the great event had occurred, the river had 

 arrived ' like a thief in the night.' On the morning of the 24th June, 

 I stood on the banks of the noble Atbara river, at the break of day. 

 The wonder of the desert ! Yesterday there was a barren sheet of 

 glaring sand, with a fringe of withered bush and trees upon its 

 borders, that cut the yellow expanse of desert. For days we had 

 journeyed along the exhausted bed : all Nature, even in Nature's 

 poverty, was most poor : no bush could boast a leaf: no tree could 

 throw a shade : crisp gums crackled upon the stems of the mimosas, 

 the sap dried upon the burst bark, sprung with the withering heat of 

 the simoom. In one night there was a mysterious change — wonders 

 of the mighty Nile ! — an army of water was hastening to the wasted 

 river; there was no drop of rain, no thunder-cloud on the horizon to 

 give hope, all had been dry and sultry ; dust and desolation yester- 

 day, to-day a magnificent stream, some 500 yards in width, and from 

 fifteen to twenty feet in depth, (lowed through the dreary desert ! 

 Bamboos and reeds, with trash of all kinds, were hurried along the 

 muddy waters. Where were all the crowded inhabitants of the pool ? 

 The prison doors were broken, the prisoners were released, and 

 rejoiced in the mighty stream of the Atbara." — p. 51. 



Now for a somewhat more detailed account of the Zoology. The 

 monkeys unquestionably take the post of honour among the beasts of 

 the forest ; and although our glimpses of the quadrumanes are few 

 and far between, they are well worth searching for, and well worth 

 reading aud quoting when found. The first peep of our four-handed 

 friends exhibits them in a shrewd, careful, and I may say sagacious 

 character. 



