African Game Trails 
289 
struck by the lack of men of middle age; 
all the tribes who were touched by the 
blight of the Mahdist tyranny, with its ac¬ 
companiments of unspeakable horror, suf¬ 
fered such slaughter of the then young men 
that the loss has left its mark to this day. 
The English when they destroyed Mahdism 
rendered a great service to humanity; and 
their rule in the Soudan has been astound- 
ingly successful and beneficial from every 
stand-point.* 
We steamed onward down the Nile; 
sometimes tying up to the bank at night¬ 
fall, sometimes steaming steadily through 
the night. We reached the Sud, the vast 
papyrus marsh once so formidable a bar¬ 
rier to all who would journey along the 
river; and sunrise and sunset wdre beauti¬ 
ful over the endless, melancholy stretches 
of water reeds. In the Sud the only 
tree seen was the water-loving ambatch, 
light as cork. Occasionally we saw hip¬ 
pos and crocodiles and a few water birds; 
and now and then passed native villages, 
the tall, lean men and women stark 
naked, and their bodies daubed with 
mud, grease, and ashes to keep off the 
mosquitoes. 
We stopped at the mouth of the Sobat 
to visit the American Mission, and were 
most warmly and hospitably received by 
the missionaries, and were genuinely im¬ 
pressed by the faithful work they are 
doing, under such great difficulties and 
with such cheerfulness and courage. The 
Medical Mission was especially interest¬ 
ing. It formed an important part of the 
mission work; and not only were the 
natives round about treated, but those 
from far away also came in numbers. At 
the time of our visit there were about 
thirty patients, taking courses of treat¬ 
ment, who had come from distances vary¬ 
ing from twenty-five miles to a hundred 
and fifty. 
We steamed steadily down the Nile. 
Where the great river bent to the east we 
would sit in the shade on the forward 
deck during the late afternoon and look 
down the long glistening water-street 
in front of us, with its fringe of reed 
*The des 
European bl< 
tarists ” and 
feeble best tc 
potism of Mahdist rule was so revolting, so 
nd hideous, that the worst despotism by men of 
self-styled “ apostles of peace ” who did their 
) prevent the destruction of this infamy. 
VOL. XLVIII.—28 
bed and marshy grassland and papyrus 
swamp, and the slightly higher dry land 
on which grew acacias and scattered 
palms. Along the river banks and inland 
were villages of Shilluks and other tribes, 
mostly cattle owners; some showing slight 
traces of improvement, others utter sav¬ 
ages, tall, naked men, bearing bows and 
arrows. 
Our Egyptian and Nubian crew recalled 
to my mind the crew of the dahabiah on 
which as a boy I had gone up the Egyptian 
Nile thirty-seven years before; especially 
when some piece of work was being done 
by the crew as they chanted in grunting 
chorus “ Ya allah, ul allah.” As we went 
down the Nile we kept seeing more and 
more of the birds which I remembered, one 
species after another appearing; familiar 
cow herons, crocodile plover, noisy spur¬ 
wing plover, black and white kingfishers, 
hoopoos, green bee-eaters, black and white 
chats, desert larks, and trumpeter bull¬ 
finches. 
At night we sat on deck and watched 
the stars and the dark, lonely river. The 
swimming crocodiles and plunging hippos 
made whirls and wakes of feeble light 
that glimmered for a moment against the 
black water. The unseen birds of the 
marsh and the night called to one an¬ 
other in strange voices. Often there were 
grass fires, burning, leaping lines of red, 
the lurid glare in the sky above them 
making even more sombre the surround¬ 
ing gloom. 
As we steamed northward down the long 
stretch of the Nile which ends at Khartoum, 
the wind blew in our faces, day after day, 
hard and steadily. Narrow reed beds bor¬ 
dered the shore; there were grass flats and 
groves of acacias and palms, and farther 
down reaches of sandy desert. The health 
of our companions who had been suffering 
from fever and dysentery gradually im¬ 
proved; but the case of champagne, which 
we had first opened at Gondokoro, was of 
real service, for two members of the party 
were at times so sick that their situation 
was critical. 
We reached Khartoum on the afternoon 
of March 14th, 1910, and Kermit and I 
parted from our comrades of the trip with 
real regret; during the year we spent to¬ 
gether there had not been a jar, and my 
respect and liking for them had grown 
