the first that should arrive and be unloaded, to take the burden of the other.  All my effects, inconsequence, did not arrive before evening.  During my absence to see after this vexatious affair, the Pasha had departed with the camp, as I learned the same evening on my return.  After leaving the most bulky part of my baggage in one of the boats, I proceeded on the 21st to the place where the Pasha’s last camp had been, to join some party who should have been delayed by circumstances similar to my misadventure.  On my arrival I found the Hasna Katib, and about three hundred soldiers, waiting till camels should come from Berber to carry them to join the Pasha.  There were, besides, seven hundred Mogrebin infantry in the boats, awaiting the means of transporting their tents and baggage across the Desert.  On my representing to the Hasna Katib the circumstance that had delayed me, he informed me that the Selictar was expected from below in a few days, who, on the day after his arrival, would proceed after the Pasha, and that I had better accompany him.  I accepted the advice, and pitched my tent to await the arrival of the Selictar.  The same day I was informed that all the large boats had received orders to abandon the attempt to pass the remainder of the third cataract of the Nile.  They had already, with great difficulty, got through about fifty difficult passages, and it was reported that there were nearly one hundred more ahead before the third cataract could be got clear of.  When the river is full, and the flood, of course, strong, this cataract must, in my opinion, be almost impassable upwards, as, on account of the strange direction of the river, little or no aid can be derived from the wind, and the current in some places, from the straitness of the passages between the rocks and islands, must, in the time of the inundation, be very furious, while the cordel, from the natural obstacles which cover the shore of this cataract, could hardly overcome the difficulties which every mile or two would present.[28]

On the first day of the moon Jamisalachar, the Selictar arrived from below, where he had been to collect durra for the army.  Two days after I set forward in company with him to pass the Desert.  The road for two days lay near the bank of the river.  By the middle of the afternoon of the first day we arrived at a pleasant spot on the border of the Nile, where we encamped to pass the night.  On the morning following we mounted our horses at sunrise, and by mid-day arrived at a fine pond of water at the foot of a high rock, at no great distance from the river, where we refreshed ourselves and filled the water-skins, as at this place the roads turns into the Desert.  We marched from the middle of the afternoon till an hour after midnight, when we halted to sleep.  The road for this day was evidently the dry bed of an arm of the Nile, which, during the inundation, is full of water.  Even at this season the doum tree and the acacia, which grew on its borders, were