VIEW ON THE KEEBALY, NEAR KUBBY.
For the next day we waited on. No boats arrived. This waste of time suited the plans neither of Mohammed nor of myself. Our provisions, moreover, were getting low. There was no prospect of revictualling. Accordingly our resolution was taken: without delay we would return to Nembey.
THE KEEBALY.
During the day of indecision, I exerted myself as best I could to explore the wildernesses of the Keebaly. My attention was chiefly attracted by a fragrant crinum, in shape and size resembling a white lily. The diversity of the trees seemed almost endless, and I was especially amazed at the variety of the anonaceæ and fig-trees, of which I found little short of forty species.
An infallible proof of the size and copiousness of the river was afforded by the number of hippopotamuses that were floundering about. I amused myself by clambering along the smooth rocks that projected into the water, and testing my bullets on the hides of the unwieldy brutes; having an ample store of ammunition, for which there did not seem to be much demand in the way of regular hunting, I fired away over the surface of the water, for the hour together. My sport created a vivid sensation amongst the natives upon the opposite bank, for although they had the prudence to keep carefully out of sight, they could not resist surreptitiously spying at our camp from behind their bushes; they manifested their surprise at the enormous range covered by my rifles, being acquainted only with the guns of the Nubians, the best of which could not carry half the distance.
The waters of the Keebaly have the repute of affording a home to a very remarkable animal that has never been observed in any of the streams that rise from the Nile basin. The Nubians, who have a habit of calling anything with which they are not familiar by whatever name may come uppermost at the moment, have given this animal the designation of a “Kharoof-el-bahr,” or river-sheep; they describe it in such a way that there can be little doubt that it is a manatus or lamantin (probably M. Vogellii), which is so frequently found in the rivers of Western Africa that flow into the Atlantic. My short and unsettled sojourn on the Keebaly prohibited me from securing, out of these tropical source-streams, a specimen of this strange representative of the Sirenia family.
I am perfectly certain that if Mohammed had pleased he could have forced his way across the river. The dexterous Nubians had but to swim over with their guns upon their heads, and they could readily have taken possession of the canoes which, too large and cumbrous to be transported by land, were concealed in the thickets upon the opposite shore. I merely mention this to illustrate my opinion that, with a company of Nubians, the great African rivers in themselves offer no insuperable obstacles to a resolute traveller.
As already affirmed, the Keebaly is to be considered as the main stream of the river that, in its lower course, is known as the Welle. Before quitting it we may do well to give our brief attention to the geographical questions that are associated with this discovery.
In the accounts collected from his agents, and published by Poncet, the river is called the Boora or Baboora;[45] but as I never heard this name, I can only surmise that Poncet’s informants had somehow misunderstood or misinterpreted the regular name Keebaly or Keebary. In the same way I never heard anything of a king mentioned under the name of Kagooma, or of a tribe called the Onguroo. The Nubians seem never to recollect the native names of rivers, and invariably pronounce all names whatever most incorrectly; the information derived from that quarter is of little value to the geographer, and it is very much to be regretted that the most travelled and experienced leaders of the Khartoom expeditions should have failed so much in acquiring definite details; had it been otherwise, their knowledge would have been of great assistance in laying down more complete and accurate maps of the country.
The probability that the Keebaly and the Welle are identical with the upper course of the Shary appears to become at once almost a positive certainty when we ask the counter-question, “If this is not the Shary, whence does the Shary come?” All that we know and all that we do not know about the north and north-western districts conspire to satisfy us that in that direction there is neither a sufficient reservoir, nor an adequate space, for the development of a network of streams large enough to form a river which is half a mile broad at its mouth, and which fills a lake as large as the whole of Belgium. The waters of the Welle, however, do not rise till April, while the Shary occasionally rises in March. In order to explain this earlier rising of the lower river, we seem to be compelled to adopt the supposition that there must be some second main stream which issues from a latitude more southerly than the Keebaly. Quite insignificant are the two affluents, the Nalobey and the Nomayo, which the river receives on the left from the south of Munza’s territory.