White Nile

“ The labour of towing through swamps, tugging by the long grass, and poling against a strong current, is dreadful, and there appears to be no end to this horrible country. "On dit," that during the dry season there is plenty of game near the river, but at present boundless marshes devoid of life, except in the shape of mosquitoes, and a very few water-fowl, are the only charms of the White Nile. ”

“ Nile. The moon, round, brilliant, strangely near, suffused the scarred old visage of the world with phantom silver; the stones of the parapet glowed dully, the pavement glistened whitely, all things it touched with gentleness, lavishing beauty upon beauty, mellowing ugliness or effacing it. The deep blue Nile, beribboned with the glancing lights from the silent feluccas, curling musically along the sides of the frost-like dahabeahs and steamers, rolled on to the sea; and the blue-white arc-lamps, spanning the Great Nile Bridge, took the semblance of a pearl necklace. ”

“ The colouring of the flowers is often so intense that the eye aches in contemplating it. It should be added that the euphorbia, which is very common in this region, yields a poisonous milky juice, in which the natives dip their arrows. A scratch from one of these envenomed weapons will rapidly prove mortal.
Beyond Lake Nû, the White Nile breaks into an intricate series of curves and meanders, pouring its waters downwards with violent swiftness. ”

“ Nevertheless, throughout that desert, and neglected wilderness, the Nile has flowed for ages, and the people upon its banks are as wild and uncivilized at the present day as they were when the Pyramids were raised in Lower Egypt. The Nile is a blessing only half appreciated; the time will arrive when people will look in amazement upon a mighty Egypt, whose waving crops shall extend, far beyond the horizon, upon those sandy and thirsty deserts where only the camel can contend with exhausted nature. ”

“ This is here six feet high, whilst, a hundred paces up the Nile, behind the young water-reeds, no elevation of the shores is observed. We remark no strata of earth on our shore, but clay and humus are closely mixed. At nine o’clock we navigate further, without the lust of our crew for meat being gratified, for the people seem to have driven away their goats, and they have nothing else. ”

“ The water is excessively bad throughout the White Nile, especially between the Shillook and the Kytch tribes; that of the Bahr Gazal is even worse. The reis Diabb tells me that the north wind always fails between the Nuehr and the upper portion of the Kytch. I could not believe that so miserable a country existed as the whole of this land. There is no game to be seen at this season, few birds, and not even crocodiles show themselves; all the water-animals are hidden in the high grass ”

“ The banks of the stream are here hemmed in by ranges of hills from 100 to 250 feet high; these are entirely destitute of soil, being composed of enormous masses of red granite, piled block upon block, the rude masonry of Nature that has walled in the river. The hollows between the hills are choked with a yellow sand, which, drifted by the wind, has, in many instances, completely filled the narrow valleys. Upon either side of the Nile are vestiges of ancient forts. The land appears as though it bore the curse of Heaven; misery, barrenness, and the heat of a furnace are its features. ”

“ The Blue Nile during the dry season is so reduced that there is not sufficient water for the small vessels engaged in transporting produce from Sennaar to Khartoum; at that time the water is beautifully clear, and, reflecting the cloudless sky, its colour has given it the well-known name of Bahr el Azrak, or Blue River. No water is more delicious than that of the Blue Nile; in great contrast to that of the White river, which is never clear, and has a disagreeable taste of vegetation. ”

“ But it was afterward found that the White Nile was the longer of the two and the greater in volume, and many lives were sacrificed in the attempt to find its origin. The discovery and exploration of the lakes of Central Africa, where the Nile rises, belongs to our day; and the names of Burton, Speke, Grant, Livingstone, Stanley, Baker, Long, and others, will go down in history for solving a mystery which has puzzled the world for centuries. ”

“ We had visited all the Nile tributaries of Abyssinia, including the great Blue Nile that had been traced to its source by Bruce. The difficult task still lay before us—to penetrate the unknown regions in the distant south, to discover the White Nile source.* Speke and Grant were on their road from Zanzibar, cutting their way upon untrodden ground towards Gondokoro. Petherick's expedition to assist them had met with misfortune, and we trusted to be able to reach the equator, and perhaps to meet our Zanzibar explorers somewhere about the sources of the Nile. ”

“ The entire country is merely a vast marsh, with a river flowing through the midst. At this season last year I was on the Settite. That great river and the Atbara were then excessively low.
The Blue Nile was also low at the same time. On the contrary, the White Nile and the Sobat, although not at their highest, are bank-full, while the former two are failing; this proves that the White Nile and the Sobat rise far south, among mountains subject to a rainfall at different seasons, extending over a greater portion of the year than the rainy season of Abyssinia and the neighbouring Galla country. ”

“ Easterly deviations follow in the afternoon, and the mountain with two peaks seen from the mast before noon, shews itself in N. The river gains a majestic breadth for the short track it is free of islands; the anterior part of the shores is low and bordered with grass. Nile buffaloes which are in incredible numbers here, owing to the grass on the islands, greeted us twice to-day, and with such blows that Rassulla Effendi became quite pale. ”

“ In any case they would be equally benefited by water coming from the Blue Nile. Besides this, the negro population living on the White Nile is very much less advanced, and less likely to form an industrious agricultural population than the inhabitants of the Eastern Soudan.
Nor is the bed of the White Nile well adapted for carrying the water. From Lake Albert to Khartoum the distance is 2,100 kilometres, and the total drop is only 300 metres. It flows slower through a hotter country. ”

“ The men have been selecting sweethearts instead; thus I must wait here tomorrow, that being the "Soog" or market day, when I shall purchase my camels and milch goats. The banks of the river very uninteresting—flat, desert, and mimosa bush. The soil is not so rich as on the banks of the Blue Nile—the dhurra (grain) is small. The Nile is quite two miles wide up to this point, and the high-water mark is not more than five feet above the present level. The banks shelve gradually like the sands at low tide in England, and quite unlike the perpendicular banks of the Blue Nile. ”

“ Ages before man could have existed in that inhospitable land, that thread of water was at its silent work: through countless years it flooded and fell, depositing a rich legacy of soil upon the barren sand until the delta was created; and man, at so remote a period that we have no clue to an approximate date, occupied the fertile soil thus born of the river Nile, and that corner of savage Africa, rescued from its barrenness, became Egypt, and took the first rank in the earth's history. ”

“ There was no difficulty in the route, as the sterile desert of sand and pebbles was bounded by a fringe of bush amid mimosa that marked the course of the Nile, to which our way lay parallel. There was no object to attract particular attention, and no sound but that of the bleating goats driven homeward by the Arab boys, and the sharp cry of the desert sand grouse as they arrived in flocks to drink in the welcome river. The flight of these birds is extremely rapid, and is more like that of the pigeon than the grouse ”

“ The girls and boys are the brickmakers, and the strong men are the drivers, copper-tinted Egyptians who sit on chairs which the strong women bear, while others hold up the great sun-shades, or fan with ostrich fans the heat which the lashing exercise brings upon them. It is a good land. Nile spreads along in sight of all, prince and slave, with its sweet treasures and its clouds of bird-life, and by its banks rise those columned buildings. Colour is over all, rich tints in yellow, blue, red, and black, grounded with white, symbolic in design, each tint a law unchanging. ”

“ We do not even know the source of the Atbara; how should we know the source of the great Nile. A great portion of the Atbara flows through the Pasha of Egypt's dominions; the firman in your possession with his signature, will insure you respect, so long as you remain within his territory; but if you cross his frontier, you will be in the hands of savages. The White Nile is the country of the negroes; wild, ferocious races who have neither knowledge of God nor respect for the Pasha, and you must travel with a powerful armed force; the climate is deadly ”

“ The buffalo was so disabled by my shot of yesterday that he was incapable of leaving the spot, as, with a broken shoulder, he could not get through the deep mud. My Reilly No. 10 bullet was found under the skin of the right shoulder, having passed in at the left shoulder rather above the lungs. The windings of this monotonous river are extraordinary, and during dead calms in these vast marshes the feeling of melancholy produced is beyond description. The White Nile is a veritable "Styx." When the wind does happen to blow hard, the navigation is most difficult, owing to the constant windings ”

“ The best and only really great elephant-hunters of the White Nile are the Bagara Arabs, on about the 13 degree N. lat. These men hunt on horseback, and kill the elephant in fair fight with their spears.
The lance is about fourteen feet long, of male bamboo; the blade is about fourteen inches long by nearly three inches broad; this is as sharp as a razor. Two men, thus armed and mounted, form the hunting party. Should they discover a herd, they ride up to the finest tusker and single him from the others. ”

“ The land all around is low, and the two rivers meet at right angles, but do not mingle their waters till they have rolled eight or ten miles in their common bed. The White Nile is a light-brown, muddy color, the Blue Nile a dark bluish green. Both rivers are nearly of equal breadth at the point of confluence, but the current of the latter is much the stronger. There is a low green island, called Omdurman, in the White Nile, at its junction. The ferry-boat had just brought over a party of merchants from Kordofan, with their packages of gum. ”

“ The Nile, having entered the valley between Gebel Kookoo and the western range, was no longer the calm river that we had seen to the south: numerous rocky islands blocked its course, and mud-banks covered with papyrus rush so obstructed the stream that the river widened to about a mile,—-this width was composed of numerous channels, varying in breadth between the obstructing rock and island. Upon one of the rush-covered islands a herd of elephants was discovered, almost concealed by the height of the vegetation. ”

“ The weather to-day is dull, oppressive, and dead calm. As usual, endless marshes, and mosquitoes. I never either saw or heard of so disgusting a country as that bordering the White Nile from Khartoum to this point. Course S.E. as nearly as I can judge, but the endless windings, and the absence of any mark as a point, make it difficult to give an accurate course—the river about a hundred yards in width of clear water; alive with floating vegetation, with a current of about two miles per hour. ”

“ There can be no hope of success until the slave trade shall have ceased to exist.
The journey is long, the countries savage; there are no ancient histories to charm the present with memories of the past; all is wild and brutal, hard and unfeeling, devoid of that holy instinct instilled by nature into the heart of man—the belief in a Supreme Being. In that remote wilderness in Central Equatorial Africa are the Sources of the Nile. ”

“ As matter of fact, the White Nile is enriched by an alluvium which would be quite as fruitful as that of the Blue Nile, except that it is wanting in the crumbling clay, which is the product of the volcanic mountains of Abyssinia, and which undoubtedly exercises a most beneficial influence on the results of Egyptian agriculture. Here the soil is not only rich, it is remarkable for its lightness ”

“ It was as though the brown weight of the river would drive the white men back to their own country. The indescribable scent of Nile mud in the air told that the stream was falling and the next few miles would be no light thing for the whale-boats to overpass. The desert ran down almost to the banks, where, among gray, red, and black hillocks, a camel-corps was encamped. No man dared even for a day lose touch of the slow-moving boats; there had been no fighting for weeks past, and throughout all that time the Nile had never spared them. ”

“ The country through which the White Nile passes is very unsuited to large irrigation works. Much of it is swamp, and the low slope of the land is ill-adapted for canals. The soil, too, is poor and light compared with the rich alluvial tracts on the Blue [119] Nile, which would of course receive no benefit. Practically only the provinces north of Khartoum would receive any benefit from the increased supply, and in them the cultivable land can never be more than a mere strip along the river, so circumscribed are they by the desert ridges. ”