CHAPTER YIII. 



UPPER NUBIA. 



I HE whole of the northern and western watershed of Abyssinia, with 

 the exception of the basin watered by the Barka, is known by its 

 hydrography to belong to the Nilotic system. The region watered 

 by the Blue Nile and the Atbara, with their affluents, is geogra- 

 phically sharply defined westwards by the Bahr-el-Abiad, or Great 

 Nile, and eastwards by the advanced promontories of the Abyssinian plateau. To 

 the south the water-parting between the Turaat, a tributary of the Blue Nile, and 

 the Sobat, one of the main branches of the White Nile, is partly composed of 

 mountains or high hills which have not yet been crossed by European explorers. 

 An unknown land, with an area equal to that of Belgium and Holland together, 

 stretches beyond these limits, and here the frontiers are more efPectually guarded 

 by its savage, warlike, or wandering peoples than by a line of fortresses and 

 custom-houses. The zone of separation between Upper and Lower Nubia is 

 formed by the relatively small region which separates the Nile at its junction 

 with the Atbara from the waters flowing to the Red Sea. With these boundaries 

 the whole of the plains between the Nile and Abyssinia constitute the region of 

 Nubia, usually designated xmder the name of Eastern Sudan, although the term of 

 Beled- es- Sudan, or " Land of the Blacks," should be restricted to lands inhabited 

 by Negroes. The total superficial area of this region may be approximately 

 estimated at 224,000 square miles ; the population of the whole territory, 

 extremely dense in the basins of the Tumat and Jabus, may perhaps number 

 3,000,000. 



Physical and Political Features. 



Forming a distinct domain to Avhieh the general slope of the soil gives a certain 

 geographical unity, eastern Sudan consists of distinct basins verging slightly north- 

 westwards along the Blue Nile and Atbara, and diverging northwards along the 

 Mareb and Barka. It is cut up by isolated masses on the plains, by chains of hills 

 and desert spaces, into natural provinces which the tril)es engaged in war have 

 converted into so many petty states, whose frontiers are changed according to the 

 fortune of war and the constant inroads of the nomad peoples. The more scanty 



