el Abiud (they said) was nearly parallel with that of the Adit, but its source was much farther off, among the Gibel el Gumara, than that of the Adit.  The Bahar el Abiud, they said, appears very large at the place where the Pasha’s army crossed it, because it is augmented from the junction of three other rivers, one from the south-west, and two others from the east, running from the mountains south of Sennaar."[59] On my asking them, “whether the Bahar el Abiud was open and free of shellals or rapids?” they said, “that at a place called Sulluk, about fifteen days march above its junction with the Adit, (i.e. above the place where we crossed the Bahar el Abiud,) there was a shellal, which they believed that boats could not pass.[60] On my asking whether, by following the banks of the Bahar el Abiud and the river that empties into it from the west, it was not possible to reach a city called Tombut or Tombuctoo?” They said, that “they knew nothing of the city I mentioned, having never been farther west than Kordofan and Darfour.”

This was all I could learn:  but I am disposed to believe, that the main stream of the Bahar el Abiud cannot have its source in the same latitude with that of the Adit, because it commenced its rise, at least, this year, about twenty days sooner than did the Adit, and the different color of its waters proves that it flows through a tract differing in quality of soil from that through which passes the Adit.  The interesting question, “whether the Niger communicates with the Bahar el Abiud?” will, however, very probably be determined before the close of another year, as the Pasha will probably send an expedition up that river.

Secondly, I am further disposed to believe that the main stream of the Adit, or Nile of Bruce, does not take its rise in Abyssinia, but in the mountains assigned as the place of its origin by the people of Sennaar.  For on viewing the mass of water that runs by Sennaar even now, when the river has not attained two-thirds of the usual magnitude it acquires during the rainy season, I can by no means believe that the main source of such a river is only about three hundred miles distant from Sennaar.

The tract of country included between the Adit and the Bahar el Abiud is called El Gezira, i.e. the island:  because, in the season of the rains, many rivers running from the mountains in the south into the Bahar el Abiud and the Adit, occasion this tract to be included by rivers.

I am disposed to believe, that the representations made of the climate of this country are much exaggerated; as, except during the rainy season, and immediately after it, the country is a high and dry plain,[61] by no means excessively hot, because the level of the countries on the Nile being constantly ascending from Egypt, occasions Sennaar to be many hundred feet higher than the level of Egypt, which is proved by the rapid descent of the waters of the Nile toward the latter country.  The east and south winds also are, in Sennaar, cool breezes; because they come either from the mountains of Abyssinia, or the huge and high ranges which compose the Gibel el Gumara.  I was in Sennaar at Midsummer, and at no time found the heat very uncomfortable, provided I was in the open air, and under a shade.  In the cottages and houses, indeed, on account of their want of ventilation, the heat was excessive.