Lake Victoria to Khartoum 



Above the falls the river is from half a mile to 

 a mile broad. A short way below the falls the 

 stream attains a width of perhaps four hundred 

 yards. The falls themselves are scarcely twenty- 

 six feet in breadth. Imagine, then, the scene 

 they present — a swirling torrent, boiling, seeth- 

 ing, and foaming beneath the narrow crags, 

 broken half-way by the ponderous rocks it leaps 

 on and over, resolving itself into bubbles and 

 spray below ; the picture is framed in with bril- 

 liant green verdure, and the same old eastern sky 

 above. 



It reminded me of Dante's Inferno, as, besides 

 the grand scenery that it is impossible for me to 

 describe in adequate terms, I saw below the 

 shapes, dim and misty through the spray, of the 

 ofieantic crocodiles which add to the fame of the 

 Murchison Falls. At the ferry I pictured them 

 as so many dreadful Charons ; whilst seen from 

 the falls, they seemed like the horrid pits into 

 which all wicked souls fall and are engulfed. 



Huge, loathsome, cruel monsters, waiting for 

 their daily bread ! Shoot and never spare ! 



The usual means of leaving this place — where, 

 by the way, there is a telegraph station — is by 

 boat, as from here the Nile is navigable as far as 

 Nimule, a distance of some two hundred miles. 

 The first things that strikes the observer on 

 boarding the steam launch, or one of the steel 

 boats belonging to the Nile flotilla, is the in- 



42 



