The Nile in 1904

by Sir William Willcocks

In 1880 Gessi was blocked in the Bahr Gazelle. The sudd in this Bahr was cut by Marno, who also cut the sudd in the Albert Nile in April 1880.

Emin Pasha mentions the fact that the Albert Nile was free of sudd and navigated from 1880 to 1883. In 1884 he states that no steamers reached Lado, but he attributed that to the Mahdi’s rebellion.

During the early years of the Mahdi’s and Khalifa’s rule there was no sudd. In the Khalifa’s time a boat laden with ivory sank in the stream where sudd block No. 15 is, south of Hillet-el-Nuer, and caused the block to form.

In 1898 Lord Kitchener found the Albert Nile sudded south of Lake No, and in March 1899 Sparkes bey, of the Egyptian Army, steamed up the Bahr Zeraf to within 30 kilometres of its head.

At the same time Sir William Garstin thought the Bahr Zeraf a stronger stream than the Albert Nile.

Descending the Albert Nile from Uganda, Colonel Martyr found the Albert Nile sudded 30 kilometres north of Ghaba Shambe.

In 1900 and 1901 Major Peake, C. M. G., R. A., and Lieut. Drury, R. N., removed sudd blocks Nos. 1 to 14, and 16 to 19, between Lake No and Ghaba Shambe. There now remains only block No. 15 south of Hillet-el-Nuer.

The condition of the channel to-day has been described under the heading of the Albert Nile. It is a very fair channel except at the diversion round block No. 15, which Sir William Garstin is very eager to see removed.

18. The White Nile.

—The White Nile stretches from the Sobat mouth to Khartoum and has a length of 838 kilometres and very little fall. It everywhere bears traces of having been the channel of the Blue Nile when in ancient times the Gebel-Royan hill had not been cut through by the Nile, and the Blue Nile itself flowed south into the great lake which is to-day the sudd region of the Albert Nile. If the Blue Nile discharged, as it does to-day, about 2500 cubic metres per second throughout the year, the Sobat 600 cubic metres, the Albert Nile 1000, the Gazelle tributaries 700, and the rainfall on the lake itself was 1 metre per annum, while the evaporation was 2¹⁄₂ metres, (all reasonable figures), the water entering the lake was 300 cubic kilometres per annum and the evaporation was the same, provided the lake had an area of 120,000 square kilometres, which is, moreover, reasonable when we examine the plan. During the whole of this period, the valley of the Nile in Egypt received its water from the Atbara alone.