THE ATBARA I1IVEH. 2'21 darker Nile is distinctly marked. I could look up the Atbara for about a mile, to where it curved out of sight between high green banks covered with flowering mimosas. It was a charming piece of river scenery, and I longed to follow the stream upward through the wild domains of the Hallengas and Hadendoas, through the forests and jungles of Takka and Sckangalla, to where, an impetuous torrent, it foams through the Alpine highlands of Samen, under the eternal snows of Abba-Jaret and Amba-Hai. In Abyssinia it bears the name of Tacazze, but afterwards through the greater part of its course, is called the Atbara (and the country it waters, Dar Atbara), except at its junction with the Nile, where the natives name it El-bahr Mogran.

Two or three hours later we reached the large town of Darner, which gives its name to the point of land between the two rivers. It is a quarter of a mile from the shore, and is a collection of mud buildings, scattered through a grove of sont trees. My sailors stopped to get some mats, and I climbed the bank to look at the place, but there was nothing in the view to tempt me to enter. During the day we stopped at an island in the river, to buy some vegetables. Two men were guarding a large patch of ripe melons and cucumbers, behind which extended fields of dourra, divided by hedges of a kind of shrub cypress, all overgrown with a purple convolvulus in flower, and a wild gourd-vine, with bright yellow blossoms. In wandering through the luxuriant mazes of vegetation, I came upon a dwelling of the natives — a nest or arbor, scooped out of a thick clump of shrubs, and covered with dry branches.

It resembled the miljpas, or brush-huts of the Mexican rancheros. The only furniture was a frame of palm-sticks, serving