CHAPTER III 
VOYAGE UP WHITE NILE 
KHARTOUM TO UGANDA—1200 MILES 
A General Survey 
The joy of journeying under sail is a lost sensation. 
The modern traveller has neither the desire for it nor 
even the opportunity. On the oceans of the world the 
sailing-ship is extinct—at least as a passenger conveyance. 
It is chiefly on archaic byways, such as Nile, that sail 
survives ; and even Nile voyagers oft set forth on palatial 
stern-wheelers—chartered at ^25 a day. True, they 
“save time,” and many of them proceed to waste the 
time thus dearly bought. In me that old-time joy 
survives unalloyed : no regret at being outpaced disturbs. 
On the contrary, I rejoice when, aboard a humble gyassa 
(costing one-twentieth the amount and a hundredfold 
better adapted to my purpose), the lateen-sails are sheeted 
home and, with the unbought wind, we set forth to 
explore at will the thousand arcana of this unknown 
waterway. 
A gyassa is a two-masted felucca-rigged sailing-vessel 
of the type common on the Nile during ages, and which 
in larger and more luxurious development is termed a 
diabiyah. The Isis, the gyassa which I chartered for 
my first prospecting voyage, measured 45 feet in length, 
with a beam of 15 feet, and carried a crew of six 
hands, including the rais (captain). My dragoman was 
Mahomed Maghazi, half Egyptian, half Sudani; and my 
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