CHAP. III. 
NOTICES OF THE INTERIOR. 
125 
upper lips, and keep their heads above water : the forepart of that 
animal being the heaviest, another man sits behind the hump, in 
order to raise the fore and depress the hinder parts, whilst crossing. 
Almost every account we received of the Tsad was so ma- 
terially different, that it long remained a puzzle to us, how to 
account for such palpable errors as some of our informers must have 
fallen into. Some declared it to be so large a Lake, that the 
opposite side of it could not be seen from Birnie ; others termed 
it an inconsiderable river : at last, the nephew of the Kadi, who 
had just arrived, furnished us with the following clear statement. 
" The Tsad is not a river, but an immense Lake, into which many 
streams discharge themselves after tlie summer i-ains. It is then, 
for some months, of such extent, that the opposite shores cannot be 
seen, and the people catch many fish, and go about on it in boats. 
In the early part of the spring, v/hen the great heats come on, 
it soon changes its appearance, and dries up, with the exception of 
a small rill. This streamlet, which runs through the centre of its 
bed, is called by the same name, and comes from the westward, 
taking an easterly direction ; but to what place he knows not." 
All the inhabitants of the villages on the borders of the Lake go 
out and sow corn and esculent vegetables, which come to maturity, 
and are gathered in before the rainy season, as in Egypt, after the 
flowing of the Xile, which he has seen. He had himself observed 
the people getting in their harvest on the same ground which he 
had, only a few months before, known to be covered with water. 
The rivers which, he says, flow into the lake after the rains, 
appear to be torrents from the mountains, as he never observed 
more than the small stream I have mentioned in the dry season. 
The Tsad is also called the Gambarro after it quits Birnie, and 
even there it is as frequently called the Nil. Until a few years 
ago, when the country became much improved under the mild 
government of a very religious Moslem, it was the custom to throw 
