The heart of Africa, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Georg August Schweinfurth

Unhindered by any material obstacles, our course now lay between floating islands, which were partly adorned with variegated blossoms, and partly loaded with a luxuriant growth of splendid ferns. The poles sufficed to keep the boats from the floating vegetation, the masses of which were as unyielding as though they had been sheets of ice. It was evident by the motion of these masses, that the current, though it flowed languidly, had a continued progress towards the east. The river only varies in depth from about 8 to 14 feet. The bed presents the appearance of a meadow, in which little bright tortoises enjoy their pasture. This submerged sward is composed exclusively of the Ethiopian vallisneria, of which the female blossoms, affixed to spiral peduncles, rise from a fathom deep to the surface of the stream, their coiling stalks extending far and wide. Very wonderful is this plant in its sexual development; its northern sisters haunt the waters of the Po and of the Rhone, and have furnished a theme for the admiration of the poet.

Far away, on either side, beyond the flooded borders of the grassy river-bed could be discerned, at a distance of a league or two, large tracts of forest land; and between the river and the line of woods which stretched to the horizon there could be observed the cumbrous shapes of elephants going to and fro, and demonstrating that there at least the land was firm.

The channel, which we rapidly passed along under favourable breezes, became continually broader, and the nearer we approached the river source, the more the banks seemed to recede from each other. The sight of men, fishing out of canoes formed by a couple of hollow stems being fastened together, made us aware that we were approaching the dwellings of the Dinka, and soon after we came upon the enclosures for cattle surrounded by low thatch huts upon the left bank. Sailing on towards the south and south-east, we approximated to the limit of our voyage. A great cracking up in the air revealed to us that the sailyard had once more broken, so that it was only by main force, by pushing and pulling, that we managed to reach a large Dinka village, which lay on the west, almost at the extremity of the stream. Here was the cul-de-sac, to which the Dinka have given the name of the Kyt. We had quite recently passed the mouth of the Dyoor, which appears to separate into several streams; but if my attention had not been called to this circumstance by the Reis, I should certainly never have observed it, on account of the uniform features of that watery region. In our delight at having so quickly, and without misadventure, accomplished our passage up the Gazelle, we had a night of feasting and merry-making.

MESHERA ON THE GAZELLE.

The remainder of the journey was soon completed, and in the early morning hours of the 22nd of February we found ourselves at the Meshera, the landing-place of all who resort to the Gazelle. This place is marked in the maps as Port Rek, called so from the Rek, a section of the Dinka. These Rek people were the first allies among the natives that the new comers had acquired, and they had been accustomed to provide them with bearers long before the Khartoom merchants had established any settlements in the interior. Deducting the days on which we had not proceeded, our boats had taken thirty days in going from Khartoom to the Meshera. I had been anxious to make a good investigation of the river banks; otherwise the voyage might easily be accomplished in twenty days.

Above the mouth of the Dyoor, so difficult of access, the deep channel is continued for a space of sixteen miles, when it forms the cul-de-sac which I have mentioned: there is not the least current when the waters are all at their height; but in March and April there may at some places be observed a retrograde motion of the stream. It is manifestly an ancient bed of the Dyoor, or of some river which in the lapse of time has changed its course. It is not easy to explain it, but the stream seemed to me, as I think I could farther demonstrate, the navigable overflow of some inland liman, that is, the receptacle of a number of considerable rivulets meeting together, something like what the delta of the Canton river would be, if it could be levelled, filled up, and carried away inland. The uniform depth of the channel might seem to originate in some freak in the conformation of the ground, or of the masses of vegetation, which are irregularly scattered about; but really it is only an indication of a condition of things long passed away, when the mainstream flowed through better defined and more contracted borders.

Let us for a moment review the impressions we have gained. The volume of water brought by the Gazelle to swell the Nile is still an unsolved problem. In the contention as to which stream is entitled to rank as first-born among the children of the great river god, the Bahr-el-Ghazal has apparently a claim in every way as valid as the Bahr-el-Gebel. In truth, it would appear to stand in the same relation to the Bahr-el-Gebel as the White Nile does to the Blue. At the season when the waters are highest, the inundations of the Gazelle spread over a very wide territory; about March, the time of year when they are lowest, the river settles down, in its upper section, into a number of vast pools of nearly stagnant water, whilst its lower portion runs off into divers narrow and sluggish channels. These channels, overgrown as they look with massy vegetation, conceal beneath (either in their open depth, or mingled with the unfathomable abyss of mud) such volumes of water as defy our reckoning. The Gazelle then it is which gives to the White Nile a sufficient impetus to roll its waters onward; subsequently the Bahr-el-Gebel finds its way and contributes a more powerful element to the progress of the stream. It must all along be borne in mind that there are besides two other streams, the Dyoor and the Bahr-el-Arab, each of them more important than any tributary of the Bahr-el-Gebel; and these bring in their own influence. To estimate aright the true relation of all these various tributaries is ever opening up the old question in a new light.

THE KYT.

The ramifications above the mouth of the Bahr-el-Arab are very complicated, and must be very imperfectly traced on our present maps. The map issued by Lejean has many details, but must be accepted with caution, and requires us to remember that paper is patient of error as well as of truth. Whoever has traversed the lakes (so to call them) to the west of the Bahr-el-Arab, has, almost immediately beyond the mouth of the Dyoor, come upon the winding channel known as “the Kyt.” The shores of the Kyt are firm; there are detached groups of papyrus driven by the wind sometimes to its one bank, and sometimes to the other: its waters rise and fall, but have no other apparent motion; it widens at its extremity into a basin of papyrus, which was now open, but which in 1863 was entirely choked by ambatch. Heuglin, at that date, discerned, as he thought, in the dwindled and distorted stems a prognostication of an approaching disappearance of the ambatch; and from 1869 to 1871 there was no trace of it, Various openings are made by the water towards the west among the masses of papyrus, which enclose a labyrinth of little wooded islets.[13] One of these islands is the resting-place for the boats, and close at hand the voyagers establish their temporary camp. Being surrounded on every side by the water, all is secure from any hostile attack. The regular landing-place is on the southern shore of the basin, and thence commence the expeditions to the interior.

Such is the channel which, from the times of the earliest explorers, which appear to extend from the date of Nero’s centurions, mentioned by Seneca, up to the mercantile enterprises and voyages of discoveries of the last ten years, has always brought boats to that cul-de-sac, called by the Nubian sailors their Meshera. The first boat, which actually entered the Gazelle, was that of a Khartoom merchant, named Habeshy, in 1854; two years later followed Consul Petherick, the first to open mercantile transactions with the tribes resident in these remote regions.