BAHR EL, a great river of interior Africa, which, at Halfia, below Sennar, joins the Bahr-el-Azrek, or river of Abyssinia; and these unite at Khartoum and form the true Nile. The Abyssinian river was long considered by Europeans as the main stream; but more accurate observation has now clearly determined, that the Abjad, both as to magnitude and length of course, is entitled to the pre-eminence. Its sources, however, and the upper part of its course, have not been reached by any European. The nearest approaches to the source that have been made were in 1842, when an expedition from Egypt reached so far south as 4°42. N. Lat., nearly in the meridian of Cairo; and in January 1850, when Dr Knoblicher, the Pope’s vicar-general in Central Africa, reached about six miles farther south. The former saw no mountains, though they had passed the latitude commonly assigned to the Mountains of the Moon; on the contrary, they observed immense marshes and large islands. Dr Knoblicher twice ascended a mountain in the latitude above mentioned, and saw the river trending away in a southerly direction, till it vanished between two mountains. The last natives he met with, the Bary negroes, informed him that beyond those mountains the river came straight from the south.