FISHING ON THE TABARA. 477 



going to look for fine fish, namely the almost com- 

 pletely desert countries traversed by the Nile and some 

 of its principal affluents. We are indebted to the graphic 

 pen of Sir Samuel Baker for a most interesting account 

 of the sport obtained by him in one of these the Atbara 

 which flows for an immense distance through the desert. 

 In no place, he says, was the river bed less than 400 

 yards wide, " but the river was dead, not only partially 

 dry, but so glaring was the sandy bed that the reflection 

 of the sun was almost unbearable." In June, at the 

 time he speaks of, even the very grass upon the 

 desert had turned to dust : 



" Nevertheless, at intervals (Sir Samuel Baker states) were 

 many pools of considerable size and depth ; these holes become 

 reservoirs of water when the river is exhausted, and in such 

 asylums all the usual inhabitants of the large river are crowded 

 together in a comparatively small space. They are positively 

 full of life ; huge fish, crocodiles of immense size, turtles, and 

 occasionally hippopotami, consort together in close and un- 

 wished-for proximity." * 



One evening, he tells us, he strolled down to the mar- 

 gin of one of these pools to fish. His " rod was a single 

 bamboo," and he had "a very large reel with nearly 

 three hundred yards of line that had been specially 

 made for monsters, and a powerful hook fitted upon 

 treble-twisted brass wire." 



" There was a difficulty (Sir Samuel Baker goes on to say) 

 in procuring bait; a worm had never been heard of in the 

 burning deserts of Nubia, neither had I a net to catch small 

 fish " (such as the author of these pages has suggested to be 

 carried as a most useful adjunct to a traveller's outfit). " I 



* The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, by Sir Samuel Baker, 1867, p. 34. 



