the blossom has a powerful fragrance; it grows like a feather,
about eighteen inches long, forming a cluster of small yellow
flowers. The day pleasantly cool; thermometer, 95 degrees.

"May 11.--At 5 A.M. we arrived at Korosko; lat. 22 degrees 50
minutes N.; the halting-place for all vessels from Lower Egypt
with merchandise for the Soudan."

At this wretched spot the Nile is dreary beyond description, as
a vast desert, unenlivened by cultivation, forms its borders,
through which the melancholy river rolls towards Lower Egypt in
the cloudless glare of a tropical sun. From whence came this
extraordinary stream that could flow through these burning sandy
deserts, unaided by tributary channels? That was the mysterious
question as we stepped upon the shore now, to commence our land
journey in search of the distant sources. We climbed the steep
sandy bank, and sat down beneath a solitary sycamore.

We had been twenty-six days sailing from Cairo to this point. The
boat returned, and left us on the east bank of the Nile, with the
great Nubian desert before us.

Korosko is not rich in supplies. A few miserable Arab huts, with
the usual fringe of dusty date palms, compose the village; the
muddy river is the frontier on the west, the burning desert on
the east. Thus hemmed in, Korosko is a narrow strip of a few
yards' width on the margin of the Nile, with only one redeeming
feature in its wretchedness--the green shade of the old sycamore
beneath which we sat.