CHAPTER IX 
VOYAGE UP WHITE NILE —{continued) 
(hi) The Western Bend (Open Steppe) 
Beyond the initial deserts, and beyond the forests already 
described, White Nile enters upon a third and totally 
dissimilar region. A succession of naked landscapes, of 
treeless steppe, open prairie, and of marsh interminable, 
stretches for ioo miles from about Kodok (better 
known in its period of ephemeral importance as Fashoda) 
right onwards to Lake No and the Sudd. There are 
scattered woods here also, some of great extent; but 
these being composed chiefly of the humble table-topped 
“Sont” (Acacia arabica, leafless, and little bigger than 
thorn-bush), are devoid of all semblance to the tall ever¬ 
green forests we have left behind. Such scenery can 
scarcely be described as alluring to a traveller who seeks 
only the sensational or the picturesque. But it is at that 
point where advantage accrues to the naturalist, and 
especially to the hunter-naturalist. For any monotony of 
physical scene sinks into insignificance as compared with 
its faunal aspect, and with the opportunity of encountering 
new forms of wild-life, some of them not to be met with 
elsewhere on earth. 
On entering its “western bend,” White Nile loses 
much of its majesty of breadth, being split up into a maze 
of channels separated by long, low, ridge-like islands, each 
outflanked by mural barriers of papyrus, cane-grass, and 
oom-suff\ a giant flowering sedge or carex (Vossia 
135 
