CHAPTER V. 



SOBAT AND YAL BASINS. 



HE Sobat, supposed by certain explorers to be the true White Nile, 

 is occasionally even superior in volume to the main stream. It 

 receives the drainage of an extensive basin, roughly estimated at 

 70,000 square miles. This vast space is still a blank on the map, 

 or exhibits little more than the names of tribes inserted merely on 

 the authority of the natives and of travellers who have penetrated farthest into 

 the interior. Debono ascended the river in a boat for over 80 miles, while a 

 steamer advanced 140 miles beyond the confluence. Antoine d'Abbadie, Beke, 

 and recently Schuver, have explored several tributary valleys on the western 

 watershed of the Abyssinian highlands, and have, moreover, collected information 

 from the Arab dealers and natives. The Yal, or Jal, which rises in the Anam and 

 Berta highlands under the names of the Yavash or Kishar, that is " Great River," 

 is even less known in its middle and lower course than the Sobat. The Arab 

 traders call it the Sobat, like the much larger river flowing farther south. Its 

 mouth is blocked by sand only during exceptionally dry seasons, such as that of 

 1861. Between the Yal and the Blue Nile, for the space of more than five degrees 

 of latitude, the White River receives only one perennial aflluent. The Nile and 

 its two tributaries are fringed by deleb palms, tamarinds, ebony, and huge acacia 

 forests, which though rich in gum are at present used only for the sake of the 

 wood. One of these acacias is the " coftar " or flute-tree (acacia fistula^, whose 

 ivory-like branches are drilled with holes by the insects living in the gall-nuts 

 with which they are covered. The wind rushes through these openings, producing 

 a soft mellow sound like that of the flute. These forests gradually disappear 

 towards the mouth of the Yal, where the bare steppe stretches right and left, 

 relieved only by the smoke of a few Arab camping-grounds. 



The Gambil and Koma Tribes. 



Most of the inhabitants of the Sobat basin are of Negro stock, the Gallas being 

 met only in comparatively small isolated communities. The first plains watered 

 by the Baro and Garreh affluents on leaving the Abyssinian mountains are occupied 



