cock, resembling both, and larger than either; immense spoonbills of a snowy whiteness, widgeon, teal, yellow-legged plover, and a hundred species of (to me at least) unknown water fowl, were sporting before me; and it was long before I could disturb the tranquillity of the dwellers on these waters by firing a giin. The soil near the edges of the lake was a firm dark mud; and, in proof of the great overflowings and recedings of the waters, even in this advanced dry season, the stalks of the gussub, of the preceding year, were standing in the lake, more than forty yards from the shore. The water is sweet and pleasant, and abounds with fish; which the natives have a curious way of catching. Some thirty or forty women go into the lake, with their wrappers brought up between their legs, and tied round their middles, as I should say, by single files, and forming a fine at some distance in the water, fronting the land, for it is very shallow near the edges, and absolutely charge the fish before them so close, that they are caught by the hand, or leap upon the shore. We purchased some, and the best flavoured was a sort of bream. A circumstance happened whilst I was on the margin of the lake, which was a further proof that the little kindnesses I had shown the Arabs were not lost upon them; and which supported my favourite position, that no people on earth are so savage, but that gentle kind treatment, with a frank and liberal manner, will gain their confidence and regard. A lamb, the most harmless thing that breathes, alarms a child who for the first time sees such an animal. I had suffered my horse to go loose, in order to approach close to the flights of birds around me, and he probably thinking the tents might afford him better fare than where I left him, first rubbed off his bridle, and then quietly returned to the encampment. About the same time one of the freed women found my bornouse, which had fallen from the saddle, and brought it to Boo Khaloom. All this created an alarm, and it was then found out, that two boats or canoes had been
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