CHAPTER IX 



VOYAGE UP WHITE NILE (continues!) 

 (iii) THE WESTERN BEND (OPEN STEPPE) 



BEYOND the initial deserts, and beyond the forests already 

 described, White Nile enters upon a third and totally 

 dissimilar region. A succession of naked landscapes, of 

 treeless steppe, open prairie, and of marsh interminable, 

 stretches for 100 miles from about Kodok (better 

 known in its period of ephemeral importance as Fashoda) 

 right onwards to Lake No and the Sudd. There are 

 scattered woods here also, some of great extent ; but 

 these being composed chiefly of the humble table-topped 

 "Sont" (Acacia arabica, leafless, and little bigger than 

 thorn-bush), are devoid of all semblance to the tall ever- 

 green forests we have left behind. Such scenery can 

 scarcely be described as alluring to a traveller who seeks 

 only the sensational or the picturesque. But it is at that 

 point where advantage accrues to the naturalist, and 

 especially to the hunter-naturalist. For any monotony of 

 physical scene sinks into insignificance as compared with 

 its faunal aspect, and with the opportunity of encountering 

 new forms of wild-life, some of them not to be met with 

 elsewhere on earth. 



On entering its "western bend," White Nile loses 

 much of its majesty of breadth, being split up into a maze 

 of channels separated by long, low, ridge-like islands, each 

 outflanked by mural barriers of papyrus, cane-grass, and 

 oom-suff, a giant flowering sedge or carex (Vossia 



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