within the zone of regular rainfall, an intermediate region that extends to the margin of the great lakes, where we meet with the equatorial belt of perennial rains. Henceforth we have not only heat but moisture acting upon the face of nature.
SWAMPS OF THE WHITE NILE.
One may determine which of the two climates is the more tolerable by considering whether he would prefer to be roasted or stewed. The traveller would find it hard to decide whether the desert or the swamp is the greater bar to his advance. Every mile of progress marks an increase of dampness and of warmth. First of all, we pass through the great mimosa forest, which extends, belt-like, almost across the continent, marking the confines of the Sahara and the Soudan. The reader must not imagine a dense girdle of tall trees and tangled undergrowth, but a park-like country, with wide glades between clumps and
lines of thorny shrubbery. The mimosa, or Arabian acacia—the tree from which the gum-arabic of commerce is extracted—has assigned to it the out-post duty in the struggle between tropical luxuriance and desert drought. By and by it gives place to the ambatch as the characteristic tree of the Nile. The margin of the river becomes marshy and reedy. The water encroaches on the land and the land on the water. The muddy stream rolls lazily along between high walls of rank vegetation, and bears whole islands of intertwisted leaves, roots and stems on its bosom, very much as an Arctic strait bears its acres of ice floes. It breaks up into tortuous channels that lead everywhere and nowhere. A nearly vertical sun shines down on the voyager as he slowly toils up stream. Scarcely a breath of air stirs to blow away the malarious mists or fill a drooping sail. Mosquitoes are numerous, and insatiate for blood.
Day thus follows day with nothing to break the monotony except now and then the appearance of a hippopotamus, rising snortingly to the surface, a crocodile with his vicious jaws, or, where the land is solid, a buffalo pushing his head through the reeds to take a drink. The true river margin is invisible except from the boat’s masts over the head of the tall papyrus. Even could we reach it, we would wish ourselves back again, for of all the growth of this dismal swamp man is the most repulsive. The Dinka tribes of the White Nile are among the lowest in the scale of human beings. They are naked, both as to clothing and moral qualities. The Shillooks are a finer race physically, but inveterate pirates and murderers.
In the midst of this swampy region the Nile receives another important tributary from the mountains of Southern Abyssinia. It is the Sobat which, Speke says, “runs for a seven days’ journey through a forest so dense as to completely exclude the rays of the sun.”
Above its mouth we must be prepared to meet the greatest of all the obstructions of the Nile. Here are many small affluents from both east and west, and here is a vast stretch of marsh through which the waters soak as through a sponge. In the centre of this “sponge” tract is a small lake—Lake No.
But to reach it or emerge from it again, by means of the labyrinthine channels, is a work of great difficulty. The “sponge” is a thick coating of roots, grasses and stems matted together so as to conceal the waters, yet open enough for them to percolate through. It may be ventured upon by human feet, and in many places supports quite a vegetation. But the traveller is in constant danger of falling through, to say nothing of the danger from various animals. It was through this “sponge” that Colonel Baker, in his second Nile expedition, managed to cut a canal, through which was dragged the first steamer that ever floated on the head waters of the great river.
