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For some months we resided at Khartoum, as it was necessary to
make extensive preparations for the White Nile expedition, and to
await the arrival of the north wind, which would enable us to
start early in December. Although the north and south winds blow
alternately for six months, and the former commences in October,
it does not extend many degrees southward until the beginning of
December. This is a great drawback to White Nile exploration, as
when near the north side of the equator, the dry season commences
in November, and closes in February; thus, the departure from
Khartoum should take place by a steamer in the latter part of
September; that would enable the traveller to leave Gondokoro,
lat. N. 4 degrees 54 minutes, shortly before November; he would
then secure three months of favourable weather for an advance
inland.

Having promised Mek Nimmur that I would lay his proposals for
peace before the Governor-General of the Soudan, I called upon
Moosa Pasha at the public divan, and delivered the message; but
he would not listen to any intercession, as he assured me that
Mek Nimmur was incorrigible, and there would be no real peace
until his death, which would be very speedy should he chance to
fall into his hands. He expressed great surprise at our having
escaped from his territory, and he declared his intention of
attacking him after he should have given the Abyssinians a
lesson, for whom he was preparing an expedition in reply to an
insolent letter that he had received from King Theodore. The King
of Abyssinia had written to him upon a question of frontier. The
substance of the document was a declaration that the Egyptians
had no right to Khartoum, and that the natural boundary of
Abyssinia was the junction of the Blue and White Niles as far
north as Shendy (Mek Nimmur's original country); and from that
point, in a direct line, to the Atbara; but that, as the desert
afforded no landmark, he should send his people to dig a ditch
from the Nile to the Atbara, and he requested that the Egyptians
would keep upon the north border. Moosa Pasha declared that the
king was mad, and that, were it not for the protection given to
Abyssinia by the English, the Egyptians would have eaten it up
long ago, but that the Christian powers would certainly interfere
should they attempt to annex the country.

The Egyptians seldom had less than twenty thousand troops in the
Soudan provinces; the principal stations were Khartoum, Cassala,
and Dongola. Cassala was close to the Abyssinian frontier, and
within from fifteen to twenty days' march of Souakim, on the Red
Sea, to which reinforcements could be despatched in five days
from Cairo. Khartoum had the advantage of the Blue Nile, that was
navigable for steamers and sailing vessels as far south as
Fazogle, from which spot, as well as from Gallabat, Abyssinia
could be invaded; while swarms of Arabs, including the celebrated
Hamrans, the Beni Amer, Hallongas, Hadendowas, Shookeriahs, and
Dabainas, could be slipped like greyhounds across the frontier.
Abyssinia is entirely at the mercy of Egypt.

Moosa Pasha subsequently started with several thousand men to
drive the Abyssinians from Gallabat, which position they had
occupied in force with the avowed intention of marching upon
Khartoum; but upon the approach of the Egyptians they fell back
rapidly across the mountains, without a sign of showing fight.
The Egyptians would not follow them, as they feared the
intervention of the European powers.

Upon our first arrival in Khartoum, from 11th June until early in
October, the heat was very oppressive, the thermometer seldom
below 95 degrees Fahr. in the shade, and frequently 100 degrees,
while the nights were 82 degrees Fahr. In the winter, the
temperature was agreeable, the shade 80 degrees, the night 62
degrees Fahr. But the chilliness of the north wind was
exceedingly dangerous, as the sudden gusts checked the
perspiration, and produced various maladies, more especially
fever. I had been extremely fortunate, as, although exposed to
hard work for more than a year in the burning sun, I had
remarkably good health, as had my wife likewise, with the
exception of one severe attack while at Sofi. Throughout the
countries we had visited, the temperature was high, averaging
about 90 degrees in the shade from May until the end of
September; but the nights were generally about 70 degrees, with
the exception of the winter months, from November until February,
when the thermometer generally fell to 85 degrees Fahr. in the
day, and sometimes as low as 58 degrees at between 2 and 5 A.M.

I shall not repeat a minute description of Khartoum that has
already been given in the "Albert N'yanza;" it is a wretchedly
unhealthy town, containing about thirty thousand inhabitants,
exclusive of troops. In spite of its unhealthiness and low
situation, on a level with the river at the junction of the Blue
and White Niles, it is the general emporium for the trade of the
Soudan, from which the productions of the country are transported
to Lower Egypt, i.e. ivory, hides, senna, gum arabic, and
bees'-wax. During my experience of Khartoum it was the hotbed of
the slave-trade. It will be remarked that the exports from the
Soudan are all natural productions. There is nothing to exhibit
the industry or capacity of the natives; the ivory is the produce
of violence and robbery; the hides are the simple sun-dried skins
of oxen; the senna grows wild upon the desert; the gum arabic
exudes spontaneously from the bushes of the jungle; and the
bees'-wax is the produce of the only industrious creatures in
that detestable country.

When we regard the general aspect of the Soudan, it is extreme
wretchedness; the rainfall is uncertain and scanty, thus the
country is a desert, dependent entirely upon irrigation. Although
cultivation is simply impossible without a supply of water, one
of the most onerous taxes is that upon the sageer or water-wheel,
with which the fields are irrigated on the borders of the Nile.
It would appear natural that, instead of a tax, a premium should
be offered for the erection of such means of irrigation, which
would increase the revenue by extending cultivation, the produce
of which might bear an impost. With all the talent and industry
of the native Egyptians, who must naturally depend upon the
waters of the Nile for their existence, it is extraordinary that
for thousands of years they have adhered to their original simple
form of mechanical irrigation, without improvement.

If any one will take the trouble to watch the action of the
sageer or water-wheel, it must strike him as a most puny effort
to obtain a great result, that would at once suggest an extension
of the principle. The sageer is merely a wheel of about twenty
feet diameter, which is furnished with numerous earthenware jars
upon its exterior circumference, that upon revolving perform the
action of a dredger, but draw to the surface water instead of
mud. The wheel, being turned by oxen, delivers the water into a
trough which passes into a reservoir, roughly fashioned with
clay, from which, small channels of about ten inches in width
radiate through the plantation. The fields, divided into squares
like a chess-board, are thus irrigated by a succession of minute
aqueducts. The root of this principle is the reservoir. A certain
steady volume of water is required, from which the arteries shall
flow throughout a large area of dry ground; thus, the reservoir
insures a regular supply to each separate channel.

In any civilized country, the existence of which depended upon
the artificial supply of water in the absence of rain, the first
engineering principle would suggest a saving of labour in
irrigation: that, instead of raising the water in small
quantities into reservoirs, the river should raise its own waters
to the required level.

Having visited every tributary of the Nile during the
explorations of nearly five years, I have been struck with the
extraordinary fact that, although an enormous amount of wealth is
conveyed to Egypt by the annual inundations of the river, the
force of the stream is entirely uncontrolled. From time
immemorial, the rise of the Nile has been watched with intense
interest at the usual season, but no attempt has been made to
insure a supply of water to Egypt during all seasons.

The mystery of the Nile has been dispelled; we have proved that
the equatorial lakes supply the main stream, but that the
inundations are caused by the sudden rush of waters from the
torrents of Abyssinia in July, August, and September; and that
the soil washed down by the floods of the Atbara is at the
present moment silting up the mouths of the Nile, and thus
slowly, but steadily, forming a delta beneath the waters of the
Mediterranean, on the same principle that created the fertile
Delta of Egypt. Both the water and the mud of the Nile have
duties to perform,--the water to irrigate; the deposit to
fertilize; but these duties are not regularly performed:
sometimes the rush of the inundation is overwhelming, at others
it is insufficient; while at all times an immense proportion of
the fertilizing mud is not only wasted by a deposit beneath the
sea, but navigation is impeded by the silt. The Nile is a
powerful horse without harness, but, with a bridle in its mouth,
the fertility of Egypt might be increased to a vast extent.

As the supply of water raised by the sageer is received in a
reservoir, from which the irrigating channels radiate through the
plantations, so should great reservoirs be formed throughout the
varying levels of Egypt, from Khartoum to the Mediterranean,
comprising a distance of sixteen degrees of latitude, with a fall
of fifteen hundred feet. The advantage of this great difference
in altitude between the Nile in latitude 15 degrees 30 minutes
and the sea, would enable any amount of irrigation, by the
establishment of a series of dams or weirs across the Nile, that
would raise its level to the required degree, at certain points,
from which the water would be led by canals into natural
depressions; these would form reservoirs, from which the water
might be led upon a vast scale, in a similar manner to the
insignificant mud basins that at the present day form the
reservoirs for the feeble water-wheels. The increase of the
river's level would depend upon the height of the dams; but, as
stone is plentiful throughout the Nile, the engineering
difficulties would be trifling.

Mehemet Ali Pasha acknowledged the principle, by the erection of
the barrage between Cairo and Alexandria, which, by simply
raising the level of the river, enabled the people to extend
their channels for irrigation; but this was the crude idea, that
has not been carried out upon a scale commensurate with the
requirements of Egypt. The ancient Egyptians made use of the lake
Mareotis as a reservoir for the Nile waters for the irrigation of
a large extent of Lower Egypt, by taking advantage of a high Nile
to secure a supply for the remainder of the year; but, great as
were the works of those industrious people, they appear to have
ignored the first principle of irrigation, by neglecting to raise
the level of the river.

Egypt remains in the same position that Nature originally
allotted to her; the life-giving stream that flows through a
thousand miles of burning sands suddenly rises in July, and
floods the Delta which it has formed by a deposit, during perhaps
hundreds of thousands of inundations; and it wastes a
superabundance of fertilizing mud in the waters of the
Mediterranean. As Nature has thus formed, and is still forming a
delta, why should not Science create a delta, with the powerful
means at our disposal? Why should not the mud of the Nile that
now silts up the Mediterranean be directed to the barren but vast
area of deserts, that by such a deposit would become a fertile
portion of Egypt? This work might be accomplished by simple
means: the waters of the Nile, that now rush impetuously at
certain seasons with overwhelming violence, while at other
seasons they are exhausted, might be so controlled that they
should never be in excess, neither would they be reduced to a
minimum in the dry season; but the enormous volume of water
heavily charged with soil, that now rushes uselessly into the
sea, might be led throughout the deserts of Nubia and Libya, to
transform them into cotton fields that would render England
independent of America. There is no fiction in this idea; it is
merely the simple and commonplace fact, that with a fall of
fifteen hundred feet in a thousand miles, with a river that
supplies an unlimited quantity of water and mud at a particular
season, a supply could be afforded to a prodigious area, that
would be fertilized not only by irrigation, but by the annual
deposit of soil from the water, allowed to remain upon the
surface. This suggestion might be carried out by gradations; the
great work might be commenced by a single dam above the first
cataract at Assouan, at a spot where the river is walled in by
granite hills; at that place, the water could be raised to an
exceedingly high level, that would command an immense tract of
country. As the system became developed, similar dams might be
constructed at convenient intervals that would not only bring
into cultivation the neighbouring deserts, but would facilitate
the navigation of the river, that is now impeded, and frequently
closed, by the numerous cataracts. By raising the level of the
Nile sixty feet at every dam, the cataracts would no longer
exist, as the rocks which at present form the obstructions would
be buried in the depths of the river. At the positions of the
several dams, sluice gates and canals would conduct the shipping
either up or down the stream. Were this principle carried out as
far as the last cataracts, near Khartoum, the Soudan would no
longer remain a desert; the Nile would become not only the
cultivator of those immense tracts that are now utterly
worthless, but it would be the navigable channel of Egypt for the
extraordinary distance of twenty-seven degrees of
latitude--direct from the Mediterranean to Gondokoro, N. lat. 4
degrees 54 minutes.

The benefits, not only to Egypt, but to civilization, would be
incalculable; those remote countries in the interior of Africa
are so difficult of access, that, although we cling to the hope
that at some future time the inhabitants may become enlightened,
it will be simply impossible to alter their present condition,
unless we change the natural conditions under which they exist.
From a combination of adverse circumstances, they are excluded
from the civilized world: the geographical position of those
desert-locked and remote countries shuts them out from personal
communication with strangers: the hardy explorer and the
missionary creep through the difficulties of distance in their
onward paths, but seldom return: the European merchant is rarely
seen, and trade resolves itself into robbery and piracy upon the
White Nile, and other countries, where distance and difficulty of
access have excluded all laws and political surveillance.
Nevertheless, throughout that desert, and neglected wilderness,
the Nile has flowed for ages, and the people upon its banks are
as wild and uncivilized at the present day as they were when the
Pyramids were raised in Lower Egypt. The Nile is a blessing only
half appreciated; the time will arrive when people will look in
amazement upon a mighty Egypt, whose waving crops shall extend,
far beyond the horizon, upon those sandy and thirsty deserts
where only the camel can contend with exhausted nature. Men will
look down from some lofty point upon a network of canals and
reservoirs, spreading throughout a land teeming with fertility,
and wonder how it was that, for so many ages, the majesty of the
Nile had been concealed. Not only the sources of that wonderful
river had been a mystery from the earliest history of the world,
but the resources and the power of the mighty Nile are still
mysterious and misunderstood.

In all rainless countries, artificial irrigation is the first law
of nature, it is self-preservation; but, even in countries where
the rainfall can be depended upon with tolerable certainty,
irrigation should never be neglected; one dry season in a
tropical country may produce a famine, the results of which may
be terrible, as instanced lately by the unfortunate calamity in
Orissa. The remains of the beautiful system of artificial
irrigation that was employed by the ancients in Ceylon, attest
the degree of civilization to which they had attained; in that
island the waters of various rivers were conducted into valleys
that were converted into lakes, by dams of solid masonry that
closed the extremity, from which the water was conducted by
artificial channels throughout the land. In those days, Ceylon
was the most fertile country of the East; her power equalled her
prosperity; vast cities teeming with a dense population stood
upon the borders of the great reservoirs, and the people revelled
in wealth and plenty. The dams were destroyed in civil warfare;
the wonderful works of irrigation shared in the destruction; the
country dried up; famine swallowed up the population; and the
grandeur and prosperity of that extraordinary country collapsed
and withered in the scorching sun, when the supply of water was
withdrawn.

At the present moment, ten thousand square miles lie desolate in
thorny jungles, where formerly a sea of waving rice-crops floated
on the surface; the people are dead, the glory is departed. This
glory had been the fruit of irrigation. All this prosperity might
be restored: but in Egypt there has been no annihilation of a
people, and the Nile invites a renewal of the system formerly
adopted in Ceylon; there is an industrious population crowded
upon a limited space of fertile soil, and yearning for an
increase of surface. At the commencement of this work, we saw the
Egyptians boating the earth from the crumbling ruins, and
transporting it with arduous labour to spread upon the barren
sandbanks of the Nile, left by the retreating river; they were
striving for every foot of land thus offered by the exhausted
waters, and turning into gardens what in other countries would
have been unworthy of cultivation. Were a system of irrigation
established upon the principle that I have proposed, the
advantages would be enormous. The silt deposited in the
Mediterranean, that now chokes the mouths of the Nile, and blocks
up harbours, would be precipitated upon the broad area of
newly-irrigated lands, and by the time that the water arrived at
the sea, it would have been filtered in its passage, and have
become incapable of forming a fresh deposit. The great difficulty
of the Suez canal will be the silting up of the entrance by the
Nile; this would be prevented were the mud deposited in the upper
country.

During the civil war in America, Egypt proved her capabilities by
producing a large amount of cotton of most excellent quality,
that assisted us materially in the great dearth of that article;
but, although large fortunes were realized by the extension of
this branch of agriculture, the Egyptians suffered considerably
in consequence. The area of fertile soil was too limited, and, as
an unusual surface was devoted to the growth of cotton, there was
a deficiency in the production of corn; and Egypt, instead of
exporting as heretofore, was forced to import large quantities of
grain. Were the area of Egypt increased to a vast extent by the
proposed system of irrigation, there would be space sufficient
for both grain and cotton to any amount required. The desert
soil, that is now utterly worthless, would become of great value;
and the taxes upon the increased produce would not only cover the
first outlay of the irrigation works, but would increase the
revenue in the ratio proportionate to the increased surface of
fertility. A dam across the Atbara would irrigate the entire
country from Gozerajup to Berber, a distance of upwards of 200
miles; and the same system upon the Nile would carry the waters
throughout the deserts between Khartoum and Dongola, and from
thence to Lower Egypt. The Nubian desert, from Korosko to Abou
Hamed, would become a garden, the whole of that sterile country
inclosed within the great western bend of the Nile towards
Dongola would be embraced in the system of irrigation, and the
barren sands that now give birth to the bitter melon of the
desert (Cucumis colocynthis), would bring forth the water-melon,
and heavy crops of grain.* The great Sahara is desert, simply
because it receives no rainfall: give it only water, and the sand
will combine with the richer soil beneath, and become productive.
England would become a desert, could it be deprived of rain for
three or four years; the vegetation would wither and be carried
away by the wind, together with the lighter and more friable
portions of the soil, which, reduced to dust, would leave the
coarser and more sandy particles exposed upon the surface; but
the renewal of rain would revivify the country. The deserts of
Egypt have never known rain, except in the form of an unexpected
shower, that has passed away as suddenly as it arrived; even that
slight blessing awakens ever-ready Nature, and green things
appear upon the yellow surface of the ground, that cause the
traveller to wonder how their seeds could germinate after the
exposure for so many months in the burning sand. Give water to
these thirsty deserts, and they will reply with gratitude.

* The great deserts of Northern Africa, to about
the 170 N. lat., are supposed to have formed the
bottom of the Mediterranean, but to have been
upheaved to their present level. The volcanic bombs
discovered in the Nubian Desert suggest, by their
spherical form, that the molten lava ejected by
active volcanoes had fallen from a great height
into water, that had rapidly cooled them, in the
same manner that lead shot is manufactured at the
present day. It is therefore highly probable that
the extinct craters now in existence in the Nubian
Desert were active at a period when they formed
volcanic islands in a sea--similar to Stromboli,
&c. &c.

This is the way to civilize a country: the engineer will alter
the hard conditions of nature, that have rendered man as barren
of good works as the sterile soil upon which he lives. Let man
have hope; improve the present, that his mind may look forward to
a future; give him a horse that will answer to the spur, if he is
to run in the race of life; give him a soil that will yield and
tempt him to industry; give him the means of communication with
his fellow-men, that he may see his own inferiority by
comparison; provide channels for the transport of his produce,
and for the receipt of foreign manufactures, that will engender
commerce: and then, when he has advanced so far in the scale of
humanity, you may endeavour to teach him the principles of
Christianity. Then, and not till then, can we hope for moral
progress. We must begin with the development of the physical
capabilities of a country before we can expect from its
inhabitants sufficient mental vigour to receive and understand
the truths of our religion. I have met with many Christian
missionaries, of various and conflicting creeds, who have
fruitlessly sown the seed of Christianity upon the barren soil of
Africa; but their labours were ill-timed, they were too early in
the field, the soil is unprepared; the missionary, however
earnest, must wait until there be some foundation for a
superstructure. Raise the level of the waters, and change the
character of the surrounding deserts: this will also raise the
intellectual condition of the inhabitants by an improvement in
the natural conditions of their country. . . . . . .

The first portion of our task was completed. We had visited all
the Nile tributaries of Abyssinia, including the great Blue Nile
that had been traced to its source by Bruce. The difficult task
still lay before us--to penetrate the unknown regions in the
distant south, to discover the White Nile source.* Speke and
Grant were on their road from Zanzibar, cutting their way upon
untrodden ground towards Gondokoro. Petherick's expedition to
assist them had met with misfortune, and we trusted to be able to
reach the equator, and perhaps to meet our Zanzibar explorers
somewhere about the sources of the Nile. Although we had worked
hard throughout all seasons, over an immense extent of country,
we were both strong and well, and the rest of some months at
Khartoum had only served to inspire us with new vigour for the
commencement of the work before us. By the 17th December, 1862,
our preparations were completed; three vessels were laden with
large quantities of stores--400 bushels of corn, twenty-nine
transport animals, including camels, donkeys, and horses (among
the latter was my old hunter Tetel). Ninety-six souls formed my
whole party, including forty well-armed men, with Johann Schmidt
and Richarn. On the 18th December we sailed from Khartoum upon
the White Nile towards its unknown sources, and bade farewell to
the last vestige of law, government, and civilization. I find in
my journal, the last words written at our departure upon this
uncertain task, "God grant us success; if He guides, I have no
fear."

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