The passage which leads to the Gazelle has the essential properties of running water, although the stream itself is in winter scarcely perceptible. The river, however, is surrounded by such a multiplicity of backwaters and waters remaining in old river-beds, that the united volume of such a number of streams as I saw emptying themselves into it, at various times, through some hundreds of miles, could not possibly find its exit through this single channel alone. Petherick, in 1863, at the period when the water-floods were as low as possible, estimated the volume of waters to be rolling on at the rate of 3042 cubic feet a second; but he must have referred simply to the navigable channel at the mouth, without intending to represent that the calculation referred to the entire mass of the waters.
It remains still a matter of dispute which of the two currents should be considered as the main stream. According to analogy, as the Sobat is related to the Blue Nile, so the Bahr-el-Gebel is to the Bahr-el-Abiad, just as the Blue Nile is to the Nile of Egypt.
THE GAZELLE.
One of the objects contemplated in my journey was to show the importance of the western affluents of the Nile which unite in the Gazelle; and I have given evidence that, one way and another, they traverse a region of not less than 150,000 square miles. When I mention that in 1863 Speke called the Gazelle “an unimportant branch,”[11] and moreover that Baker has spoken of its magnitude with great depreciation, in reply, I might allude to another interesting fact in geographical annals. Not only did Bruce, a hundred years ago, suppose that he had discovered the sources of the Nile in Abyssinia, just where a hundred years previously they had been marked upon the Portuguese maps; but he represented the Bahr-el-Abiad as an inconsiderable stream, which joined the stream of his discovery at Halfaya, Khartoom at that time being not in existence. But it is absolutely impossible that Bruce could have returned from Sennaar to Berber along the left bank of the Blue Nile, and could have crossed at its mouth from the very spot where Khartoom now stands, without being aware that close behind him there was rolling its waters a stream as broad again as the Blue Nile. The record of his travels does not contain one word about the White Nile. The plain truth is that the White Nile was overlooked and disparaged, because it would have thrown his Blue Nile in the shade.[12] Ismail Pasha was quite right in saying that every fresh African traveller had his own private sources of the Nile; but for my part I am not at all ashamed to confess that I have not found them.
The wind was favourable, and so long as the course maintained a north-westerly direction we made a rapid progress. The main channel gradually contracted, however, and deviated into many abrupt meanderings, which had to be traversed by pushing and driving with poles. Here, too, the apparent banks consisted of floating grass-tangle, though further off the pasturing herds of the Dinka showed the true position of the mainland, whilst the ridge of forest beyond indicated the limit to which the inundations had extended. North of the mouth of the Gazelle the boundaries of the Shillooks and the Dinka meet each other, and the intervening territory is inhabited by the Nueir.
A GHATTAS BIRD.
In some places amongst the grass-tangle I made an attempt to botanize, and out of the numerous holes I fished up a variety of most interesting plants. The Gazelle is specially noted for the beauty of its water-lilies (Nymphæa stellata and N. lotus). Blossoms of these, in every variety of hue—white, blue, and crimson—well-nigh everywhere adorn the surface of the water; rooted below they project their long stalks and leaves through the apertures, like fishes, in the winter, to catch the air through holes in the ice. Should any one make a grasp at a blossom and fail to make good his hold, it may happen that the entire plant will make an elastic rebound and disappear beneath the grass. During the afternoon our course was N.W. and W.N.W., which is the general direction of the Gazelle throughout its lower half. The stream became wider again, the banks continuing to be lined by an impenetrable grass jungle. Remarkable dark-coloured water-birds (Plotus melanogaster) are found in considerable numbers upon the shores, intent upon making prey of small fishes. They settle upon the bushes, and one may every now and then be seen to make a sudden dive into the water, bring up a little fish in its beak, and resume its previous perch. Amongst the people of Khartoom this bird is called the “Ghattas,” a name which invested it with a special interest to me as being the name of my temporary protector.
For some few days past, just before sunset, great masses of tiny green flies had made their appearance. Although these were in no respect injurious, yet the buzzing they made and the choking cough which was caused by their numbers were anything but agreeable. Shortly after dark they retreated, only to appear again in the early dawn. Much more pertinacious were the spotty-legged gnats, which now began to torment us when the nights were not cool enough to disperse them. Everybody on board had provided himself for protection with a sack made of calico in which he slept, the result of which was ordinarily a temperature of some 80° Fahr., about the same as a regular vapour-bath. These gnats did not buzz about with so loud a noise, but their sting was much more decided. They might not cause such a lasting itching as some of their northern kindred, but the knack they had of finding a way for their proboscis through the thickest cotton till it reached one’s skin, made it only possible to keep them off by means of mosquito-nets. But altogether I reckoned this visitation as hardly worth the notice of a traveller who had grown up amongst the gnats of the teeming marshes of the north.
The Bahr-el-Ghazal may in some respects be compared to the Havel as it flows between Potsdam and Brandenburg; the two rivers are not dissimilar in their excess of floating vegetation, composed of plants which, to a great extent, are identical in their generic character. Frequently the breadth is not more than enough for a single vessel, but the depth could not be fathomed by our longest poles, and so revealed what was the enormous volume of water concealed by the carpet of grass for two hundred paces on either hand. What ordinarily appears to be land assumes at high water the aspect of an extensive lake. The general uniformity of level prevents any extensive range of vision; but I had only to mount the roof of my cabin, and, by observing the distance between the woods that skirted the prospect, I could approximately estimate the width of the river-bed. Nowhere did it appear to me to extend, like the valley of the Egyptian Nile, to a breadth of eight miles; and certainly, without further evidence, I cannot agree with former travellers, who describe it as being a lake or marsh of which the boundaries are unlimited.