THE SACRED IBIS 133 



admiration and interest that follows their every 

 utterance. No, the first place that you can at all 

 safely look for Ibis in is south of Kartoom. It 

 needs the great jungle-like brakes of papyrus that 

 grow rampantly along the river-course, and which 

 help to constitute the dread " sudd " of those 

 waters. Immense masses of it, we are told, get 

 torn off and detached when the new year's flood 

 comes rushing down, and along with other masses go 

 floating onwards till they meet with some stoppage 

 and then they form a dam, new masses coming 

 down and down, till there may be miles of this 

 floating jungle, which can, and does, get so packed 

 and compressed by the weight behind it that it 

 becomes nearly solid. In country like that the 

 Ibis lives, and that is, all will see at once, not the 

 country that Egypt is like, and therefore the Ibis 

 is an absentee from the big, gently-flowing Nile 

 from Assoan to Alexandria. Was it ever common 

 in ancient Egypt ? Not unless the conditions of 

 those days were markedly different to these. The 

 river rose each year then as now, and then as now 

 by its rise and rush of waters must have kept 

 the channel clear and the banks bare ; but it is 

 possible that there may have been at certain points 

 big swamps where the papyrus grew, which have 



