150 THE WESTEKX PEOVINCE 



refers to it as " satt " or " sett " ) is, as most untravelled people now know, 

 an extraordinarvifloating vegetable obstruction which collects in the waters 

 of these e([uatorial lakes and rivers where the lake surface is sheltered 

 from rough winds, and where the current of the river is sluggish. 

 Papyrus clumps become detached by the action of wind or floods, and, 

 driven by the breeze into little groups, their roots become united below 

 the surface [of the water by the accretion of water-weed and other vegetable 

 substances, so that in time a peaty mass is formed just below the surface 

 of the water, from which the papyrus continues to grow^ as from a soil. 

 A long Phragmifes [reed, with flnffy white plumes like pampas grass, 

 grows out into the shallow water, and builds barriers into the stream 

 which arrest the floating islands of papyrus ; or this reed may form 

 floating islands of its own. Papyrus may prosper so much on the floating 

 islands, composed' mainly of its own roots, that these roots may reach the 

 thickness of a man's leg, and grow downwards twenty feet below the top 

 of the floating islands. 



The amaranth, or " love-lies-a-bleeding " ; Pistia stratiotes (like a huge 

 duckweed) ; a certain convolvulus creeper ; and other vegetable items which 

 drift down-stream all add their mass to the vegetable dam, or by rajiid 

 growth bind one floating island to another. In some cases the ambatch- 

 trees (a kind of bean, with orange blossoms) grow steadily out into the 

 water until the river becomes too deep. They make a stout wooden barrier 

 which is one of the hardest parts of the sudd to cut through, a water- 

 thicket with strong roots going down into the mud bottom. The water 

 of the flooded Nile after the great summer rains rises, carrying this floating 

 vegetation with it. These dams of a mile and more broad across its surface 

 do not afford much resistance to the mass of the current, which flows 

 steadily beneatli them. Occasionally, however, an extra high Nile, combined 

 with strong southerly winds, may for a time tear away the sudd, especially 

 near the solid bank. Ou many of the northern creeks of the Victoria 

 Nyanza, protected from the waves of the open lake, this sudd or vegetable 

 growth is gradually creating a soil, and filling up the bays with what some 

 day may be a land 'furface of peat, perhaps afterwards coal. 



It is difficult to guess what might have been the outcome of the sudd 

 growth on the Nile but for the action of European man. The work of 

 cutting througli this obstruction, which was conducted by Major Malcolm 

 Peake, R.A., C.jM.U., was one of the most creditable actions which white 

 civilisation has produced in Africa. The resuhs which should follow on 

 free navigation between Khartum (now connected with the Mediterranean 

 by railway and steamers) and the northern frontiers of Uganda will be 

 of the greatest benefit to the starved and miserable natives of the Nile 

 bank and the isolated and sickly Europeans who upheld the Uganda 



