4 
ARRIVE AT BERBER. 
[chap. I. 
(twenty miles south of Berber), and to examine all 
the Nile tributaries from the south-east as far as 
the Blue Nile, which river I hoped ultimately to 
descend to Khartoum. I imagined that twelve months 
would be sufficient to complete such an exploration, 
by which time I should have gained a sufficient know¬ 
ledge of Arabic to enable me to start from Khartoum 
for my White Nile expedition. Accordingly I left 
Berber on the 11th June, 1861, and arrived at the 
Atbara junction with the Nile on the 13th. 
There is no portion of the Nile so great in its 
volume as that part situated at the Atbara junction. 
The river Atbara is about 450 yards in average width, 
and from twenty-five to thirty feet deep during the 
rainy season. It brings down the entire drainage of 
eastern Abyssinia, receiving as affluents into its main 
stream the great rivers Taccazy (or Settite), in addi¬ 
tion to the Salaam and Angrab. . The junction of the 
Atbara in lat. N. 17° 3 7' is thus, in a direct line from 
Alexandria, about 840 geographical miles of latitude, 
and, including the westerly bend of the Nile, its bed 
will be about eleven hundred miles in length, from 
the mouth of its last tributary the Atbara until it 
meets the sea. Thus, eleven hundred miles of absorp¬ 
tion and evaporation through sandy deserts and the 
delta must be sustained by the river between the 
Atbara junction and the Mediterranean: accordingly 
there is an immense loss of water ; and the grandest 
volume of the Nile must be just below the Atbara 
junction. 
It is not my intention in the present work to enter 
into the details of my first year s exploration on the 
Abyssinian frontier; that being so extensive and so 
completely isolated from the grand White Nile expedi¬ 
tion, that an amalgamation of the two would create 
confusion. I shall therefore reserve the exploration of 
the Abyssinian tributaries for a future publication, and 
confine my present description of the Abyssinian rivers 
to a general outline of the Atbara and Blue Nile, 
