46 



NOETH-EAST AFKICA. 



Russegger mistook for the Nile itself, is the first affluent that receives any 

 contributions from the Ethiopian highlands. It frequently sends down a greater 

 volume than the main stream, whose waters during the floods are stemmed and 

 driven back by its current. To judge from its whitish fluid contents, in which the 

 blackish Nile water disappears, the Sobat has the best claim to the title of Bahr- 

 el-Abiad, or " White River." Some of its affluents rise on the low-lying plains 

 stretching east of the Nile ; but the most important has its source much farther 

 east, in the upland valleys of the Ghesha range, which forms the water-parting 

 between the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean basins. The Baro, which is one of 

 the dozen different names of this affluent, on entering the plain traverses the 



Fig. 14. — Me8hra-er-Rkk in the Zariba Region. 

 Scale 1 : 2,200,000. 



-■^ 



E . of Greenwich 



. 30 Miles. 



marshy Lake Behair of the Arabs, or " Sea of Haarlem," as it has been renamed 

 by the Dutch explorer Schuver. During the rainy season the Sobat sends down a 

 vast quantity of water, on June 15, 1862, estimated by Pruyssenaere, 70 miles 

 above the confluence, at 42,000 cubic feet per second. Hence during the floods the 

 whole of its lower course is easily navigated ; but if large craft linger too long on 

 its treacherous flood they run the risk of being landed high and dry on some 

 shifting sandbank, as happened to the trader Andrea Debono, who was recently 

 detained in the river for eleven months. 



It is below the Sobat that the Nile takes currently the Arab name of Bahr-el- 

 Abiad, or " White River," by which it is generally known to Europeans above 



