Lake Victoria to Khartoum 



being the counterpart of Northern Somaliland, 

 both in its vegetation and also in the strange 

 outcrops of craggy hills which spring up promis- 

 cuously out of the rolling plain, some of them 

 five hundred to one thousand feet high, others 

 a modest fifty only. Here the so-called cart-road 

 to Gondokoro starts, though why it is so mis- 

 named it is not easy to say in face of the abrupt 

 nullahs, as yet unbridged, and the rivers, which 

 when in flood make the road quite impassable 

 both for wheeled traffic and for porters. 



Our road goes north, to the east of Nimule 

 hill, on the western side of which the Nile foams 

 and boils down the Fola rapids. If the wind be 

 blowing from the right direction the wayfarer can 

 just distinguish the dull roar of the waters. 

 After a march of twelve miles a pretty camp is 

 reached at the junction of the Assua and Atappi 

 rivers, over which half a dozen stately borassus 

 palms act as sentinels, and the frou-frou of 

 their broad fan-like fronds makes music pleasing 

 to the ear. 



The general trend of the ground is a gradual 

 3 lope to Gondokoro, and also to the west. All 

 the watercourses, dry at this time of the year — 

 January — and the two or three rivers that usually 

 have water in their beds, help in the rainy 

 season to swell the volume of the Nile, on our 

 left hand. The country is flat to undulating, and 

 there are no hills to be climbed on the way. 



30 



