302 
FLOATING ISLANDS IN THE NILE. 
proceeding for an hour the scene changed : we were 
upon a river a thousand yards wide, and in certain 
parts so large that we had a sea horizon. The waters 
struggling past myriads of moving and stationary 
islands, made the navigation very exciting, particularly 
when a strong head- wind blew, and hippopotami reared 
their heads in the water. Having passed these, there 
was no perceptible current ; but by watching the float- 
ing islands rolling round and round like a tub in the 
water, we saw that the stream moved about a mile an 
hour. These islands were perfect thickets of growing 
ferns, creepers, small trees, &c, hiding one-third of the 
stems of the lofty papyrus rush. It occurred to me at 
the time, seeing such masses of these islands, some being 
twenty yards in length, that the delta of the Nile 
could easily be accounted for by an accumulation of 
their sediment. During a smart breeze, with all their 
vegetation yielding, and lying over to the wind, they 
looked like a fleet of felucca-rigged vessels racing, and 
continually changing their relative positions. No sight 
could have been more striking as the crests of the 
waves dashed against them, and the sky looked black 
and stormy. It was a beautifully wild picture ; the 
slender stems of the tall papyrus, with their feathery 
tops, now erect, then waving to and fro, or crouching 
before the sudden blast, as if prepared for a spring. 
By the third day all the islands had disappeared ; 
they had melted away into floating fragments, or had 
got ashore, and lay over — wrecks — the leaves and 
fronds drooping in shapeless disorder. 
Where the river was above 500 yards wide, the 
colour of the water in the centre was quite muddy 
from the freshes ; that of the sides a clear brown. The 
