172 ARRIVAL OF BASE, taking out yards of line often without being hooked. The largest fish of this species was caught at Om Hagar, and weighed thirty-five jDounds. The fish we caught in the net were mostly bottom-feeders. I never saw any in such condition, their intestines being covered with fat. One species only took the fly, a kind of barbel ; but its mouth was so tough that the hook never penetrated beyond the bait, and it was only by keeping a continued strain on the line that we could land them at all.

I shot the largest tetel obtained during the winter, not far from Khor Meheteb ; it was a bull, and the leader of a small herd. On the 7th the two Base we had sent off to fetch some of their sheiks arrived in camp. We had despatched them the morning after our arrival on the Settite, thinking that by so doing we might be enabled to go farther up the river ; they returned, bringing about twenty of their people with them, who they said came from a village called Lacatecourah, which is situated on a mountain we ought to have taken on our way from Haikota. We of course found that they could do nothing to aid us ; they declared (but whether of their own accord, or instigated by the men we had brought from Sheik Achmed Ageer, we could not tell) that the Abyssinians had forced them to abandon their villages on the banks of the river, and had driven them into the mountains. Wc pretty well satisfied ourselves that the Base had two villages, called Toansar and Beergayla, situated on the Settite ; but whether they were still inhabited by Bas6, or had been destroyed by their enemies the Abyssinians, we never succeeded in discovering. They stated, further, that the Abyssinians had only three or four days previously captured and carried off three of their women.

They brought the sheik of Lacatecourah with them, an insignificant-looking man, to whom we made some trifling presents,