THE NILE IN 1904. 
CHAPTER I. 
The Nile. 
1. Introduction. — In the introduction to his brilliant essay on the 
Hydrology of the Nile ( 1 ), an essay, which, though written in 1865, 
foreshadowed much of what we know to day, Lombardini remarked, with 
much truth that, no river in the world lends itself to hydrological studies 
on so majestic a scale as the Nile. The most interesting river of the 
ancient world, it is still the most interesting river of our time ; and, in 
spite of all that ancient and modern discoveries have unfolded, its 
discharges are to-day more difficult to unravel and weave together than 
those of any other stream in either hemisphere. These discharges are 
still a mystery, and it will need years and years of patient observation 
and study, at the hands of the Sudan Irrigation Department, to enable 
us to state with exactitude why its floods rise and fall with such regular 
and stately precision, why they are never sudden and abrupt, and why 
its summer supplies can never be completely cut off even in their 
traverse of over 3000 kilometres through the burning and parched 
Sahara. Though the mystery of the Nile is far from being solved to-day, 
still an enormous step in advance has been made by the publication of 
Sir William Garstin’s Report on the Basin of the Upper Nile ( 2 ). This 
Report not only contains the results of three years’ observations of the 
Egyptian Survey Department in the Sudan, of Sir William Garstin’s 
own observations and studies, but also a mass of information of the 
Nile and its tributaries collected by Capt. H. G. Lyons. R. E., through 
four years of uninterrupted study. Those who know the intelligence 
and method with which Capt. Lyons works, will rate this information 
at its proper value. 
Lombardini gathered together all the information available at the 
time that Sir Samuel Baker announced the existence of the Albert 
Nyanza shortly after Speke and Grant had proclaimed to the world 
that the Victoria Nyanza was the true source of the Nile. From the 
( l ) Saggio idrolico sul Mlo , by Elia Lombardini, Milan 1865. 
(*) Report onthe Basin of the Upper Nile by Sir William Garstin. Blue Book Egypt (2) 1904. 
