THE FORKS OF THE NILE. 507 



this latter point it is joined by the " Bahr-el-Azrek, " 

 or " Blue Nile, " a turbid stream, thick with the fer- 

 tilizing mud which it carries from the Abyssinian High- 

 lands, where its head reservoir is said to be Lake 

 Tsana, a sheet of water (whose area is about 3000 

 square miles) which is situated in Lat. 12 S. which 

 parallel divides the lake into two nearly equal shares, 

 between Long. 37 and 37 30' E. Its principal tri- 

 butaries between this point and Khartum are the Dinder 

 and Rahad, and it is navigable for steamers etc., as far 

 as Fazogle. 



From Khartum, * Lat. 150 34' N., Long. 320 31' E. 

 the point of junction of the White and Blue Niles, 

 the river flows in one undivided stream the " Bahr- 

 El-Nil " or true Nile fed only by a single affluent, 

 the Atbara. From the mouth of the Atbara, a distance 

 of more than 1800 miles to the sea, its course is nearly 

 the whole way through a desert region, in a great 

 part of which rain rarely or never falls. There are 

 nominally six different cataracts, marked on the maps 

 at different points of its course below Khartum; but 

 so little was the true nature of the river really known up 

 to the time of the British expedition of 1884-5 f r the 

 relief of General Gordon, that many people supposed 

 until then that these were the only obstructions. 



Nothing however can be further from the truth. 

 Briefly stated the following is the true state of the 

 case, which so far as we have seen is not specifically 

 stated elsewhere in books. The river is clear from its 

 mouth to Assouan, where the first Cataract bars the 



* The name of this city has been spelled in several different ways 

 Khartoom, Khartoum and Khartum. The last form is the one adopted 

 in British official History of the Soudan Campaign, and approximates 

 more nearly to the Arabic than the other spellings. 



