RIVERS BAHR-EL-GHAZAL AND GIRAFFE. 381 
square. After their junction there was an evident 
increase in depth and breadth ; the waters, also, were 
less like a sewer in colour, — they had become clarified 
to a certain extent, and the rate of current was esti- 
mated at two miles per hour. The sides were rushes 
to an unknown depth ; indeed, from the accounts 
given by our captain, the Ghazal must at one time 
have been almost choked with water vegetation. He 
mentioned that the first explorer of it took three 
months to penetrate through reeds a distance which 
can now be reached in five days. I expected to have 
found it looking more like a river ; but instead of 
this, had we not been prepared for it, we should have 
passed it without notice. The White Nile was at 
once pronounced by our captain to be the nobler 
stream ; and he added that, with a favourable wind, 
it takes ten days to reach the Ghazal from Khartoom, 
and one month more of fair wind to reach from the 
Ghazal to Gondokoro. 
While waiting at the junction, our cook, M'kate, 
discovered a crocodile's nest with seventy-seven eggs. 
They were nearly all presented to us ; but their taste 
being disagreeable, we made them over to our boat- 
men. Eowing for nineteen hours almost due east, at 
the rate of two miles per hour, brought us to another 
stream, the Giraffe, coming from a south-east direction. 
It seemed to flow with rapidity — probably four or five 
miles an hour — was from fifty to sixty yards across, 
and bore down with it quantities of the pretty rosette 
called Pistia Stratiotes L., which was first gathered in 
the Karague Lake. Our captain, who was an autho- 
rity, said of this river that it had received its name 
from the circumstance that cameleopard abound in the 
