406 Sir Colin Scott-Moncrief [Jan. 25, 



last block up its whole width, and form solid obstructions known as 

 sadds, substantial enough to be used as bridges, and obstacles, of 

 course, to navigation, until they are cleared away. The waters of the 

 Saubat are of very light colour, and tinge the whole river, which, 

 above its junction, is green and unwholesome from the long chain of 

 marshes which it traverses. Hence it is called the White Nile. 600 

 miles further brings us to Khartoum, where the Blue Nile from the 

 Abyssinian mountains joins it, and at 200 miles still further to the 

 north, it is joined by the Atbara river, also from Abyssinia, a torrent 

 rather than a river. 



Baker gives a graphic account of how he was encamped by the 

 dry bed of the Atbara on June 22, 1861. The heat was intense, the 

 country was parched with drought. During the night the cry went 

 forth that the floods were coming, and in the morning he found 

 himself on the banks of a river, he says, 500 yards wide and from 15 

 to 20 feet deep. All nature had sprung into life. A little north of 

 the junction of the Atbara is Berber, whence you will remember 

 is the short cut to Suakin in the Bed Sea, which so many thought 

 would have been the true route for our army to take in relieving 

 Gordon. From Khartoum to Assouan is a distance of 1100 miles of 

 river, during which it makes two immense curves — for on a straight 

 line the distance is not half so much — and it is in this part of its 

 course that it passes over the six great cataracts or rapids which block 

 all ordinary navigation. The first, or furthest north, cataract is just 

 above Assouan, a distance of 750 miles from the Mediterranean, 

 through the country known as Egypt. From the junction of the 

 Atbara to its mouth in the Mediterranean, a distance of 1680 miles, 

 the Nile receives no tributary. On the contrary, during every mile 

 of its course its waters are diminished by evaporation, by absorption 

 and by irrigation. The river gets less and less as it flows through 

 the rainless land, and its maximum volume is to be found during the 

 floods at the junction of the Atbara, and at other seasons at Khartoum, 

 1875 miles from the Mediterranean. 



The whole distance by river from the Victoria Nyanza to the sea 

 is about 3500 miles. It may not be easy to derive any clear impres- 

 sion from this bare recital of mileage. Let me try to convey to you 

 in some other ways the idea of the length of the Nile. Standing on 

 the bridge at Cairo, I used to reflect that I was just about half-way 

 between the source of the Nile and the White Sea. Or, to put it 

 another way, if we could suppose a river crossing our English Chan- 

 nel, and that the Thames should find its way out in the Euphrates 

 and Persian Gulf, that river would be about as long as the Nile. 



In this short sketch of the course of the Nile, I must not forget 

 to mention one interesting feature. About 40 miles south of Cairo, 

 the low Libyan chain of hills which bounds the Nile valley on the 

 west is broken by a gap, through which the waters of the river can 

 flow, and beyond this gap lies a saucer-shaped depression called the 

 Fayiim, of about 400 square miles in area, sloping down to a lake of 



