CHAPTER XXIII 
BLUE NILE AND DINDER RIVER 
(i) Blue Nile 
Differing from its twin-stream, White Nile — which 
traverses desert sand and level steppe—the Blue River is 
mountain-born and bred. Springing from Lake Tsana, 
6372 feet above sea-level in Abyssinia, Blue Nile drops 
more than 4000 feet during a course of less than a 
thousand miles. Hence, even in its lower and flatter 
reaches, Blue Nile runs on a relatively steeper gradient, 
and is enclosed between well-defined banks often 20 or 30 
feet in height. 
The traveller ascending Blue Nile has scarcely left 
Khartoum ere he quits Sahara and enters upon a region 
of alluvial “cotton-soil,” which needs nothing but irriga¬ 
tion to assure perennial crops. During the dry season, 
it is true, these richer lands display but little external 
difference—they appear arid and barren enough. But 
no superficial view affords sufficient criterion. The wealth 
of soil is demonstrated when once one comes to see 
the comparatively tiny patches which have already 
been experimentally irrigated, and contrasts their green 
luxuriance of cotton, maize, and other crops alongside 
the sterile desolations which surround them. During our 
sojourn here in December 1913, Lord Kitchener of 
Khartoum inaugurated the first “ Barrage” of Blue Nile, 
a work which—despite interruptions then unforeseen— 
bespeaks the dawn of agricultural developments, the 
limits of which the future only can define, 
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