848 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

nished a number of oxen for provisions. Dr. Knoblecher described their running, when they drove the cattle together, as resembling that of the gazelle ; they leap high into the air, drawing up their long legs as they rise, and clear the ground at a most astonishing speed. The next day the vessels reached a large town called Vav, where the people received them without the least appearance of fear, and brought quantities of elephants' tusks to trade for beads. Herds of wild elephants and giraffes were now frequently seen on the banks of the river, and the former sometimes threw up their trunks and spirted water into the air when they saw the vessels. Numbers of white herons were perched composedly upon their backs and heads. The giraffes, as they gazed with wonder at the fleet, lifted their heads quite above the tops of the mimosa trees.

On the second of December, the expedition passed the mouth of the Sobat River, the only tributary stream which comes to the White Nile from the east. Its source is supposed to be in the country of the Gallas, south of the kingdom of Shoa. Its breadth, at its entrance into the Nile, is six hundred and fifty feet. Werne, who ascended it about, eighty miles, with D'Arnaud's expedition, states that its shores are higher than those of the Nile, and that the surface of the country became more elevated as he ascended, whence he infers that the White Nile, as far as it has been explored, flows in a depressed basin of the table-land of Central Africa.

From lat. 9° 2G7 to 6° 5CK N. there is a complete change in the scenery. The magnificent forests disappear, and the shores become marshy and unhealthy, covered with tall grass, whose prickly stalks render landing difficult, and embarrass the navigation of the shallows. The air is heavy with noxious mias-