The "Kenia," "James Martin," and "Good Hope" on the White Nile.
Such was our day at Hippo Camp, to which the ardent sportsman is recommended to repair, when he can get some one to show him the way.
CHAPTER X
DOWN THE WHITE NILE
We lingered lovingly around Hippo camp for two more days, moving to other lagoons and overflows of the river with the launch, and striking out inland in search of the great herd of elephants. But although their recent presence was on all sides proclaimed by snapped-off trees and trampled ground, and broad lanes cut through the grass, we saw none of them; and a tribe of natives who helped to carry home a variety of buck one afternoon, informed us upon expert authority that the whole herd had been alarmed by the arrival of strangers and the sound of firing, and had retired three days' journey from the river's bank. These natives—of the Lado Enclave—were gentleman-like folk, and I parleyed long with them upon their affairs. They were stark naked and very dignified, with graceful athletic bodies, long tapering well-bred hands, and bright keen eyes. The local chief exhibited all these characteristics in a superior degree, and his natural preeminence was recognized with instantaneous obedience by his followers. We loaded them with gifts. First, quantities of meat and hides; then chocolate all round—they love sweet things—three pieces of sugar for each, at least one empty bottle per man, and tin pots and card-board boxes almost without limit. The chief showed a fine taste in all these things, and annexed at once in the Imperial style whatever took his fancy, to whomsoever it belonged. I cast about for some means of doing him especial honour, and luckily remembered that I had bought a Japanese kimono for a dressing-gown in passing through Port Said on the journey out. With this he was forthwith enrobed, and I must say he assumed the flowing garment with that easy grace and natural self-possession which are the gifts of a wilderness life. Thus the fabrics of Cathay were by the enterprise of Europe introduced into the heart of Africa.
When, finally, with much reluctance we left this attractive place and pushed off determinedly into the stream, we lost no time in making Nimule. Steaming throughout the night and all next day along a broad flood contained by high and healthy slopes—now clothed with forest, now with waving grass—we approached, at about four in the afternoon, the mountains beneath which is the administrative station of Nimule. Hitherto the course of the Nile since it left the Albert Lake had been smooth and open—a broad, steady-flowing river everywhere navigable to vessels of not more than four feet draught. But at Nimule, after a reach of more than a hundred and seventy miles of unobstructed waterway, the river turns a sharp right angle and enters a long succession of granite gorges, through which it plunges in ceaseless cataract for a hundred and twenty miles. It is here at the head of these rapids that one of the great reservoirs of the Upper Nile must some day be constructed. "I spent hours," said Sir William Willcocks, the "practical mystic" of hydraulic engineering, "looking at the site, and seeing in a vision a great regulating work of the future." And indeed the exact scientific control of the whole vast system of Central African waters, of the levels of every lake, of the flow of every channel, from month to month and from day to day throughout the year, is a need so obvious and undisputed as to leave argument unemployed.
The change in the character of the river separated us finally from our flotilla. From Nimule to Gondokoro we must again proceed by land, and the swift and easy progress of the last few days must be exchanged for the steady grind of marches. It was this stage which had always been painted to me as the most dangerous and unhealthy in our whole journey, and I had pictured to myself eight days of toil through swamp and forest amid miasma and mosquitoes. These anticipations were not sustained. Of the disadvantages of the track along the river bank I cannot speak; but the upper road over the hills is certainly excellent and healthy, and runs throughout over firm dry undulations of a bright, breezy, scrub-covered country.
At Nimule we touched the telegraph wire again, and from the Reuter's accumulations which I studied, I learned that Parliament would not meet till the 19th of January. This gave another ten days' more rope, and I began to realize how much the spirit of these wonderful lands had taken possession of me, for it was only with the greatest reluctance and difficulty, that I forced myself to continue my homeward journey without first turning back with the launch and circumnavigating Lake Albert. No exertion or inconvenience seemed too great to win a few more glimpses of these enchanted seas and gardens, on which I may perhaps not look again, but from whose spell I can never be free. Porters to be fed from day to day, the Sirdar's steamer waiting at the Soudan frontier, public meetings looming heavily in the far-off distance, drove me onward; and with feelings of keen and genuine regret we addressed ourselves to the march to Gondokoro.