go Journal of 7 ravel and Natural History 



THE NILE TRIBUTARIES OF ABYSSINIA, AND 



THE SWORD HUNTERS OF THE H AMR AN 



ARABS:--- 



THE " Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia," means the Abyssinian 

 Tributaries of the Nile ; and the " Sword Hunterst of the 

 Hamran," means the sword-armed hunters of the Haroran. It is 

 not swords that they hunt, but elephants, and other wild animals ; 

 and it is not the Nile that pays tribute to Abyssinia, but Abyssinia 

 that sends, anil has sent for thousands upon thousands of years, 

 tribute to Egypt. The inverted title is a sacrifice to rhythm, which 

 we may pass the more easily that it is the only piece of feather 

 in the book. 



In other respects the title is happy, and well expresses the con- 

 tents of the book. It is divided into two well-marked streams, which, 

 although they flow contiguously through the volume, never mix. 

 The one is the exploration of the Al)yssinian water sources of the 

 Nile, the other the sporting adventures of the author, in which 

 latter the so-called " sword-hunters" bore a share. 



It is the complement of the author's previous work, "The 

 Albert Nyanza Great Basin of the Nile." That work laid bare the 

 sources which supplied the constant flow of the great river, but 

 did not sufficiently explain the cause of the annual inundations. 

 That is done in the present volume. 



The Lake sources of Central Africa, as Sir Samuel says, and 

 has proved, support the life of Egypt, by supplying a stream 

 throughout all seasons, that has sufficient volume to bear the 

 exhaustion of evaporation and absorption, for nearly 1200 mile.s, 

 from the junction of the Atbara to the Mediterranean, although 

 not one streamlet joins the mysterious river, nor one drop of rain 

 ruffles its surface ; but this stream, if unaided, could never over- 



• The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, and tlie Sword Hunters of the Ilamran 

 Arabs. By Sir Samuel W. Hakcr, M.A.,&c. I vol. London: M'Millan 

 & Co. 1867. 



f Sir Samuel may plead the word swordsmen, as an authority for the use of 

 the word sword-huntcr, but swordsmen is used in a figurative sense — men belong- 

 ing to the sword — while the words " fox-hunter, hare-hunter, lion-hunter, cle- 

 ]5hant-hunter, sufficiently shew that the prefix properly relates to the thing 

 liuiile(l. 



