4 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 6l 



some 130 miles northeast of .this lofty mountain mass and floating 

 on waters which had their chief source on its slopes. The northeast 

 shore of the lake which we were skirting is a low, level stretch of 

 swamp and sand in marked contrast to the rugged character of the 

 rest of the shore line. 



Late in the afternoon we picked up the Kisingiri, one of the 

 fleet of small sailboats which had set out in advance of the other boats. 

 Darkness had already fallen when we entered the broad mouth of the 

 Nile. We stopped at 10 p. m. at Koba, a station on the Uganda shore, 

 a short way below the lake. Here we collected some additional sup- 

 plies for the journey. We steamed throughout the whole night down 

 the Nile and arrived at Wadelai at noon. The river journey as far 

 as Wadelai lay through a broad, sluggish lake-like expanse of water, 

 bordered on the east shore by extensive papyrus- swamps and on the 

 west by low hills supporting a scattered growth of thorn trees and 

 grass. No native villages were to be seen, but an occasional canoe 

 guided by a native fisherman was seen on the borders of the papyrus- 

 fringed channel. The giant forms of candelabra euphorbias were 

 occasionally seen on the west bank looming up above the scrub of 

 acacias. We stopped at the abandoned station of Wadelai to pick up 

 Grogan who had been engaged by Colonel Roosevelt to act as guide 

 in the quest for white rhinoceroses. Near the station we found a 

 native village inhabited by a few naked Acholi who had much the 

 appearance of Kavirondos in their style of personal decoration — or 

 rather absence of it. The district had recently been decimated by the 

 ravages of the sleeping sickness and was nearly uninhabited at the 

 time of our visit. 



Early in the afternoon the fleet left Wadelai, the various boats 

 making independent progress down stream. Below the station both 

 banks of the river were a wide maze of papyrus swamps through 

 which the water made innumerable channels. The Nile along this 

 portion of its course reaches its greatest width, averaging quite three 

 miles, but no idea of the immense breadth can be gained from a boat, 

 owing to the channels being walled in by dense beds of papyrus. The 

 animal life on the Nile was of a constant quality and quantity, the 

 river here being depressingly uniform and monotonous. The heads 

 of occasional hippopotamuses were seen in the channel, but crocodiles 

 were quite absent, owing, no doubt, to the lack of sand banks or bars 

 for resting places. Snake birds or anhingas, lily trotters, giant ajax 

 herons, the white-headed fish eagle, and a large kingfisher were seen 

 everywhere and were quite as constant in distribution as the fringing 



