18 AFRICAN WANDEEINGS.

Our boat would not go on, and every moment we stuck on one or other of the many sandbanks of the river. Our rais had to be threatened with the kurbash (a whip made of the hide of the Nile-horse, or giraffe, both excellent), and he confessed that he expected the proper rais, his brother, to whom he had sent notice of his being compelled to sail the boat, as he himself dared not venture to take her through the cataracts. Nor were my recollections of these, as I saw them on the way up, most pleasant, although they had made a far less lasting impression on my mind than the splendid scenery had done ; as when coming, as if from a prison, out of the six or seven miles long rapids (el Bad) of Geb'l Gharri, all appeared so glorious, and we seemed to have arrived in a new land. Ere long the brother came down to the banks, and we got him aboard, but hardly were we again afloat, when he aiain ran us ashore on the rocks at the first tschellel or foaming rapids,—a special term for the white waters of rushing falls,—and instantly the whole bottom of the boat was filled with water, he howling like an old woman, as he feared for his head if he lost the boat. In consequence of my exertions during the last days in Chartura, I had, for tlie three days we had now been on the water, been suffering from fever, attended with vomitings and diarrhoea ; weak and miserable as I was, I could not have saved myself by swimming, had it been necessary, but, as I knew that our boat could not sink deeper than the bottom, and that it was now firm and fast on the rocks, as the ark on Mount Ararat, I felt no alarm and consoled the others. The holes and splits of our really almost unserviceable craft were stopped up, and the rais and crew made desperate efforts to get it off the water-covered rocks. "With much naivete the former prayed us all to get out for a single moment, which brought down on liira a volley of curses and abuse from my companions, who would hear of nothing of the sort. The hot fit of my fever was past ; so I took off all my upper garments, keeping, however, my shoes on, so that my feet might not be cut by the many tliornmussels (etlieria, Caill.), and sending Achmet first into the water, slid, feeble as I was, down after him: on this, the others followed my example, and in a i(i\y seconds we again had our heavy-laden bark afloat. Hardly had the boasting rais again begun his lies, that he wns at home in Assuan, and knew the Nile as well