The great quantities of sudd which came away on this occasion offered, we thought, a possible explanation of the green flood in the river, seen at Cairo in July, when for a few days the water is like peasoup before the first muddy flood arrives. This green water is much less noticeable in the Sudan. Our idea was that very large amounts of sudd would be brought down to Lake No by the various tributary rivers with the first floods. This would gradually become waterlogged and sink, and by being rolled over and over along the bed of the river, become disintegrated, and getting thoroughly churned up in the rocky cataracts, emerge below them as the green flood.

We kept a careful record by means of a rough but reliable Nilometre of the water level in the river at the base camp, which rose anything up to two metres with the water we let away, and remained above normal. That year was not a good Nile, and in Egypt a good deal of anxiety was felt for the cotton crop. We learnt later that at Assuan, where the big barrage was then in course of construction, the rise due to water we let away was inappreciable, but it did seem to check the fall. This implied that a very large area along

vened remained saturated, which would otherwise have been dried up. The loss of water from evaporation is very great, the volume of the river at Omdurman being greatly in excess of that at Assuan, despite the addition that brought down by the Atbara. The first considerable flood down the White Nile hardly makes itself felt in Egypt, and is used up saturating the backwaters and banks. In the year we were working, however, this first flood affected the river very distinctly in Lower Egypt, and we got the credit for having contributed towards saving the cotton that year.

A short time afterwards I was greatly astonished to see a solitary white man with two or three natives wander into the base camp. It was Grogan, on his historic journey from the Cape to Cairo! He looked wretchedly ill, and could digest nothing solid; luckily we had some milk goats in camp. He had come round the outskirts of the sudd on the Abyssinian side, and suffered greatly from lack of water. Most of his men had deserted him, and he and what were left were all sick. More than once he had had to abandon everything, and go on himself in search of water, but had always found it in the nick of time, and been able to send back a supply for those left behind. He arrived with nothing but his rifle, some ammunition, a few tins of milk

and bacon, and Cecil Rhodes' famous Union Jack, given to him at Capetown with a blessing on the undertaking. He had begun to be doubtful whether he would ever reach the Nile again, when that morning he had met a native who told him he was close to a large camp with white men on the river, and showed him the way in. Dunne attended to him and his men, and they rerecovered rapidly.

Next day Peake arrived unexpectedly, bringing with him quite a collection of white men picked up out of the sudd. There was a very nice French cavalry officer with a small rearguard party of Marchand's, including an excellent French warrant officer. Then there was Captain Gage, belonging to a British cavalry regiment, from Uganda, and with him an American, Donaldson-Smith, who had come to Africa on a shooting trip; they had started down the Bahr el Gibel intent on reaching Khartoum. And lastly, there were two Belgian officers in the service of the Congo State. They had joined Gage as the latter passed Lado. All these parties had got tied up in the middle of the swamp, and would have fared very badly had they not had the luck to run into Peake and his steamers.

It was quite an interesting gathering that evening, close on 2500 miles up the Nile, and a long way towards the centre of the continent. It made me think of another meeting, and

I felt inclined to suggest to Grogan that he should go up to the French officer and greet him with, "Major Marchand, I presume? " We of Peake's lot had come from the Mediterranean, through four years of campaigning, the French and the Belgians from different points on the Atlantic coast, while Gage and DonaldsonSmith hailed from the Indian Ocean, and Grogan from the extreme south. Thus, by a strange concatenation of circumstances, representatives of four great nations hailing from the coasts at all four points of the compass were met together in the heart of a vast area almost devoid of inhabitants. Most of the natives accompanying these parties had their teeth filed to points, rather like sharks' teeth, a custom among the cannibal tribes, and not uncommon among Dinkas round Lake No. tween them they gave us a good deal of useful and interesting information. Peake decided to despatch all our involuntary visitors down to Khartoum in a steamer going to Goz Abu Guma, and they left a few days later. After the departure of our guests, work went on unceasingly, varied as far as possible for everyone between the sudd and the camp. I only once saw elephants in the swamp area, when a large herd of full fifty with their young crossed the river over one of the dams, which said a good deal for its solidity. I found it quite

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impossible to get up with them for a shot in the canes.

A specialist from the British Museum visited us to examine the composition of the sudd, and took home specimens carefully packed. The opinion he sent us later was to the effect that the dams had probably been in existence for some hundreds of years, and were no new formation. I experimented at the base camp cutting cubes from sudd banks, and drying them in the sun for fuel for steamers, on the principle of the preparation of turf in Ireland. But though it burnt when placed in a furnace with suitable draught, it did not produce the necessary heat, there being too large a proportion of earthy detritus which I could not extract. I have often wondered if any use has since been found for what appeared an immense potential source of fuel.

The Upper Nile swarmed with fish, some of them very large. After a flood of water was let away, the river became thick and muddy, and the fish became stupefied and floated on the surface. I picked up at such a time fish weighing as much as eighty pounds. An Egyptian gunner, by occupation a fisherman, supplied us with excellent table fish, which he caught with a circular throwing net. This was weighted round the edge with lead, and on being thrown dexterously, fell in a circle on the water; the lead caused the rim to sink, and when this had

occurred the net was pulled in by a rope fastened to the centre. A number of fish would always be found caught in the meshes. Inhabitants of the Shilook tribe caught fish by merely standing waist-deep in the water, and prodding indiscriminately round them into the water with a spear.

By the end of March we had made such good progress that Peake told me I was at liberty to take the small Nile Expedi tion boat we had and three or four men, and make my own way down the river to Khartoum, with a view to obtaining the Sirdar's permission to go out to the South African War, which the latter had promised to consider as soon as I could be spared.

Of course I was off like a bird; but the journey did not prove as simple a matter as I expected. In March, the prevailing wind in the sudd area had set in from the south, the commencement of the southerly monsoon. About Khartoum the prevailing wind throughout the winter months is steady from the north, and gradually changes during spring to the south, as the monsoon gains strength.

I fondly imagined that the south wind would carry me all the way, in which case we would be able to make anything from fifty to a hundred miles a day sailing. So we started off with a limited supply of rations, and I left nearly all my ammunition behind with Dunne, who was running short.