VOYAGE UP WHITE NILE 39 



doomed, nevertheless, to failure by Ismail Pasha's 

 double-dyed duplicity and finally to be overthrown by 

 a savagery greater and yet more cruel, that of Mahdiism. 

 For nearly a score of years the Sudan vanished from view 

 submerged. 



Then in 1898, the dark epoch closed on the stricken 

 field of Omdurman. To-day even a solitary traveller may 

 go where he will throughout the Sudan and navigate the 

 Nile as safely as the Ganges or Guadalquivir. 



The total length of White Nile, from Khartoum where 

 it ends, to Lake No where it begins, is 627 miles; this 

 may zoologically be subdivided into three distinct regions 

 of approximately equal extents, to wit : 



(i) THE DESERT-STRETCH, extending from Khartoum 

 to Kosti, broad and shallow, with low-lying littoral and 

 innumerable islands great and small, tenanted by almost 

 incredible aggregations of wildfowl. 



(ii) THE FOREST-REGION, commencing beyond Kosti 

 and extending almost to Fashoda. 



(iii) THE OPEN STEPPES of cane-brake and swamp 

 that thence stretch continuously to Lake No. These 

 two latter form the big-game country. 



(i) "THE DESERT-STRETCH" 

 {Khartoum to Kosti] 



White Nile above Khartoum is immensely broad, its 

 actual limits often undefmable in featureless distance, or 

 lost in the deceptive mirage of the desert. For nearly a 

 couple of hundred miles no "scenery" exists. True, the 

 mirage aforesaid daily mocks one's sight with visions of 

 mountain-range, koppie, or crag-girt loch, where nought, 

 in fact, exists save immeasurable desert. Such monotony 

 may weary the average traveller, yet to the eye of a 

 naturalist presents features that compensate in quite other 

 directions. For that very absence of concrete "scenery" 

 is, in fact, almost a pre-requisite of existence to many of 



