From Bimie to Baghermi is ten days to the borders, S.E. Looggan, a town of Bornou, is half way, or five days; and the Tsad runs past it, across the road, in such a way, that those going to Baghermi must necessarily pass it. This river runs from S.W. to ISLE, is of great breadth, and is crossed by heavy goods being carried on rafts, floated on large gourds, which are impelled forward by swimmers, who hold or push with one hand whilst they strike with the other. Smaller rafts are used to carry four or five men, or some light goods; these, according to my informants, are formed with cross spars and gourds. The men sit astride on this machine, having their legs in the water, and so propel themselves forward ,with their hands and feet. A lighter vehicle is used for one man, and is merely a spar on two flat gourds, carried on by paddling with the feet and a small oar. I learnt with astonishment, that though the river has many crocodiles, they never attack the legs of people passing in this manner. Whether the raft or the bright yellow of the gourds intimidates them I cannot tell, but so it is. The river, according to the natives, is said to run past Foor— (Dar fur of Brown), and thence to Egypt. Horses are swam over, being buoyed up with inflated water-skins slung round them; and camels are conducted by men who hold them by their long upper lips, and keep their heads above water : the forepart of that animal being the heaviest, another man sits behind the hump, in order to raise the fore and depress the hinder parts, whilst crossing. A lm o s t every account we received of the Tsad was so materially different, that it long remained a puzzle to us, how to account for such palpable errors as some of our informers must have fallen into. Some declared it to be so large a Lake, that the opposite side of it could not be seen from Birnie; others termed it an inconsiderable river: at last, the nephew of the Kadi, who had just arrived, furnished us with the following clear statement. “ The Tsad is not a river, but an immense Lake, into which many streams discharge themselves after the summer rains. I t is then, for some months, of such extent, that the opposite shores cannot be seen, and the people catch many fish, and go about on it in boats. In the early part of the spring, when the great heats come on, it soon changes its appearance, and dries up, with the exception of a small rill. This streamlet, which runs through the centre of its bed, is called by the same name, and comes from the westward, taking an easterly direction; but to what place he knows not. All the inhabitants of the villages on the borders of the Lake go out and sow corn and esculent vegetables, which come to maturity, and are gathered in before the rainy season, as in Egypt, after the flowing of the Nile, which he has seen. He had himself observed the people getting in their harvest on the same ground which he had, only a few months before, known to be covered with water. The rivers which, he says, flow into the lake after the rains, appear to be torrents from the mountains, as he never observed more t h a n the small stream I have mentioned in the dry season. The Tsad is also called the Gambarro after it quits Birnie, and even there it is as frequently called the Nil. Until a few years ago, when the country became much improved under the mild government of a very religious Moslem, it was the custom to throw
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