TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 103 



tioiis and river deposit whicli caused the fertility of Egypt. He then gave, in the 

 form of a brief narrative of his own explorations, fii'st of the Abyssinian tributaries 

 and then of the lakes at the head of the White Nile, an account of the two sepa- 

 rate sovn-ces, first, of the inundations and fertilizing mud, and, secondly, of the 

 perennial flow of water which prevented the Lower Nile from becoming annually 

 dry when the inundation ceased. His exploration of the Atbara and Blue Nile, 

 in'l861, was undertaken mainly for the purpose of investigating their relations to 

 the main stream. The attempts of the ancient Egyptians, and afterwards of 

 Nero's centurions, to ascend to the sources of the Nile all failed ; the latter 

 ascended to a point where the White Nile expanded into vast marshes in about 

 9° N. lat. No other expedition went so far, until the one under St. Arnaud, 

 despatched by the Viceroy Mebemet Ali, one result of which was the establish- 

 ment of the trading settlement of Gondokoro, the starting-point of his own expe- 

 dition to the great Lakes. When he reached the Atbara, from Caii-o, on the 13th 

 of June 1861, he found the broad and deep bed of the river almost entii-ely dry. 

 He looked in vain for a river, but not a drop of water flowed from it into the 

 Nile. Ascending for 180 miles to Gozerajup, he witnessed, on the 23rd of June, 

 the sudden on-coming of the flood caused by the heavy rainfall of Abyssinia at 

 the commencement of the wet season. In a few minutes the Atbara was no 

 longer a desert, but a noble river, 20 feet deep and 500 yards wide. Rulber iip, 

 at Goorass(5, he reached the country whence the Atbara derives the vast amount 

 of rich soil which it carries down towards Egypt. The waters were of the con- 

 sistency of soup. He crossed in succession a number of its tributaries, and foimd 

 the general trend of the drainage from S.E. to N.W. The Settite, or Taccazzy, 

 is the principal tributary, and iDrings down almost the entire drainage of Eastern 

 Abyssinia. It has the same character as the Atbara, with the exception that it 

 does not become dry in the dry season. After being delayed for many weeks by 

 the heavy rains, he resumed his "journey, and, descending by the banks of the Blue 

 Nile, reached Khartum on the 11th of Jime 1862, having been just twehe months 

 on tbe joui-uey. The fuU significance of the fluvial phenomena which he had 

 observed on th"is expedition he did not appreciate until he arriyed in the region of 

 the gTeat lakes near the equator, which he now prepared to visit. On sailing up 

 tbe ^Vliite Nile he found a complete contrast to the rivers which descend from 

 Abyssinia. For fortj--five days he struggled through the almost boixndless swamps 

 through which it flows. He passed the point at which Nero's centurions had 

 tm-ned back, and the thought came to his mind that what the Romans had failed 

 to do might perhaps be accomplished by Englishmen. At length tbe elevated land 

 on which Gondokoro is situated was reached, and from thence, with great diffi- 

 culty, and after many perils, the narrative of which he had already presented to 

 the public, he reached the shores of the great lake. The result of his examination 

 was to prove that the main river of tbe Nile makes its exit in a perennial stream 

 from the Albert Nyanza, and that the river discovered by Speke, and flowing from 

 the Victoria Nyanza, was a tributary, discharging its waters into the Albert, and 

 following the same course as aU the eastern afiluents of the Nile, namely, from 

 S.E. to N.W. AVith regard to the disputed question of the sources of the Nile, 

 we ought to speak comparatively, and not look to the idtimate spring wbence the 

 remotest ti-ibutary of such a lake flowed, but accept this great reservoir as the true 

 source. He believed geographers were in error in denying that a lake could be a 

 source. He believed that no geographer in England or on the continent now 

 refused his assent to the statement that the White Nile flowed out of the Albert 

 Nyanza. The continuity of the river discovered by Speke and Grant, now called 

 the Victoria Nile, was also now accepted as a fact. He believed that there was 

 no connexion between the Tanganyika and the Albert Lake, but that the watershed 

 of the drainage to the south and north lies between the two. The fullest credence 

 might be given to the altitudes which he had given, as they were made by 

 Casella's thennometers, proved at Kew before leaving England, and again proved 

 after his return. Now the relation of the White Nile to the fertility of Egypt 

 was this : Egypt woidd be utterly annihilated if it depended for its irrigation on 

 the Abyssinian rivers. These simply cause the annual inundations, and are full 

 only three months in the year, corresponding vnth the three months' rainfall in Abys- 



