THE WHITE NILE. 



43 



remarkable inhabitants of this watery region is the balœniceps rex, a curious long- 

 legged aquatic bird Avith grey plumage, which when perched on a termite's hillock 

 looks from a distance like a Nuer fisherman. 



From the time when the envoys of Nero failed to penetrate the sea of floating 

 vegetation, explorers of the 



Nile have been frequently ar- Fig. 12.— Region of the "Sud." 



rested by this obstacle. Dur- scaie 1 : 2,000,000. 



ing the latter half of the 

 present century most of them 

 have had to force their way 

 through the tangled masses, 

 and one of the channels thus 

 formed by Miss Tinne's steamer 

 still bears the name of Maya 

 Signora. During the seven 

 years from 1870 to 1877 the 

 river was completely blocked, 

 obliging all travellers to con- 

 tinue their journey by the 

 Bahr-ez-Zaraf . Many were de- 

 tained for weeks and months 

 on these pestiferous waters, 

 over which hover dense clouds 

 of mosquitoes. Here Gessi 

 was arrested in 1880 with five 

 hundred soldiers and a large 

 number of liberated slaves, and 

 three months elapsed before 

 an Egyptian flotilla, under 

 Marno, was able to rescue 

 them by opening a passage 

 from below. Devoured by the 

 insects, wasted by fever, and 

 reduced to live on wild herbs 

 and the dead bodies of their 

 unfortunate comrades, most 

 of the captives found a grave 

 in the surrounding swamps, 

 and nearly all the survivors 

 perished of exhaustion soon 

 after. Gessi himself outlived 

 the disaster only a few 



months. To the lagoon of No must be attributed those " green waters " noticed at 

 Cairo during the early days of Jime, when the stream, charged with vegetable 



30 Miles. 



