PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 519 
country watered by the Nile and its tributaries, as far north as the twentieth 
degree of latitude, and excluding the Sahara, and the basins-of Lake Chad and 
the Congo on the west, and the districts watered by the river systems which 
terminate in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean on the east. Such a definition does 
not, of course, altogether agree with the existing political divisions, as it includes 
the eastern part of Abyssinia, Uganda, and part of the Congo State .territory ; 
but these divisions are in no sense geographical, whereas the basin of the Nile 
is a well-defined region which contains the greater portion of what may be 
regarded as the real Sudan. 
There is one point as regards the geography of the Sudan which’ is: remark- 
able and perhaps unique. In former times it was to a certain extent known, 
and, in the maps of Ptolemy, and of the Middle Ages, the great lakes, the 
ranges of mountains, and the rivers flowing from them, are indicated in a 
distinct, if not very accurate manner. But, owing to various causes, this 
geographical knowledge was completely lost, and.the natural features dis- 
appeared from the maps. Look, for example, at Keith Johnston’s Atlas, pub- 
lished in 1843, and you will see that there are no lakes shown, while the Nile 
to the south of 10° North latitude is indicated as an insignificant stream. The 
Sudan had relapsed into the position of a terra incognita, just as it had been in 
the days of Herodotus, and Ptolemy and the other ancient geographers were 
regarded as victims of their imaginations. 
The revival of the knowledge of geography of the Sudan may be said to 
commence with the travels of James Bruce, who visited Abyssinia in 1770, 
explored Lake Tsana, and found what he believed to be the true source of the 
Nile in the River Abai, which ran into the lake from the south. He examined 
the place where the Blue Nile flowed out of: Lake Tsana, but was not able to 
follow its course through the western mountains of Abyssinia, and rejoined it at 
Sennaar, about 220 miles above the junction with the White Nile. Travelling 
along the south bank of the Blue Nile, he crossed it at the ferry of El Efun, and 
then went on to Halfaya, north of the site of the present town of Khartum, 
which at that time-did not exist. Of the White Nile he says: ‘ At-half-past 
eight, about four miles further, we came. to the village Wad Hogali.. The river 
Abiad, which is larger than the Nile, joins it, there. Still the Nile preserves 
the name of Bahr-el-Azrek, or the Blue River, which it got at Sennaar. The 
Abiad is a very deep river; it runs dead, and with little inclination; because, 
rising in latitudes where there are continual rains, it therefore suffers not the 
decrease the Nile does by the six months’ dry weather.’ This is all he says of 
the White Nile, and he does not seem even to have taken the trouble to look at 
it,,as he reports the point of junction of the two rivers as four miles north of 
Halfaya, whereas it is to the south of that place.. He:was so convinced that 
the Blue River was the one and only Nile that he regarded the investigation of 
the White Nile as unimportant, and shows it on his map as a comparatively 
insignificant river. Bruce’s action in this matter is a warning to explorers not 
to neglect to examine something that does not fit in with their preconceived ideas. 
_ At the time of Bruce’s visit the origin of the White Nile seems to have been 
unknown to the inhabitants of the kingdom of Sennaar, a kingdom which had 
been established in 1504 by the Fung dynasty, which had taken possession of 
what had been the Christian kingdom of Alwah. Soba, the capital of Alwah, 
was abandoned, and a new town built at Sennaar, which was made the seat of 
government. The Fungs were partly of Arab and partly of negro descent, 
and their kingdom extended east of the Blue Nile to the foot of the Abyssinian 
Mountains, and westward as far as the White Nile, beyond which were the 
independent kingdoms of Kordofan and Darfur. At that time there appears 
to have been little or no traffic on the White Nile, and the marshes of the tenth 
degree, inhabited by the powerful Shilluk tribes, formed an impenetrable 
barrier to the south. : 
But, although after Bruce’s expedition to Lake Tsana the majority of people 
seem to have accepted the Blue River as the true Nile, there were some wider- 
minded people who felt that there was a secret hidden behind the marsh barrier. 
One of these was a certain Mr. W. G. Browne, who made an interesting journey 
to Darfur in 1793, and who records in the account of his travels that he had the 
conviction that the river, of which Bruce had discovered the source, was not 
the true Nile, and that he considered it a matter of great importance that the 
