^1 JSa/t on tTiu White Nile. Drawn from a photograph. 



BIRD HUNTING ON THE 

 WHITE NILE. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE DESERT RAILWAY, KHARTOUM AND 

 OMDURMAN. 



SHORTLY after the battle of Om Debreikat and the 

 death of the Khalifa Abdullahi, I found that it 

 would be possible to travel in the Soudan. For 

 fifteen years the country had been in the hands of powerful 

 savage tribes, and before that time English naturalists, 

 and especially ornithologists, had greatly neglected the 

 Soudan, although some Germans, as for instance Brehm, 

 Heuglin, and von Miiller, had done excellent work there. 

 The country being thus more or less new ground to 

 English ornithologists, I was the more anxious to visit 



