The River War | Page 3

end at which we aim. Imagination should paint the river
through every page in the story. It glitters between the palm-trees
during the actions. It is the explanation of nearly every military
movement. By its banks the armies camp at night. Backed or flanked
on its unfordable stream they offer or accept battle by day. To its brink,
morning and evening, long lines of camels, horses, mules, and
slaughter cattle hurry eagerly. Emir and Dervish, officer and soldier,
friend and foe, kneel alike to this god of ancient Egypt and draw each
day their daily water in goatskin or canteen. Without the river none
would have started. Without it none might have continued. Without it
none could ever have returned.
All who journey on the Nile, whether in commerce or war, will pay
their tribute of respect and gratitude; for the great river has befriended
all races and every age. Through all the centuries it has performed the
annual miracle of its flood. Every year when the rains fall and the
mountain snows of Central Africa begin to melt, the head-streams
become torrents and the great lakes are filled to the brim. A vast
expanse of low, swampy lands, crossed by secondary channels and
flooded for many miles, regulates the flow, and by a sponge-like action
prevents the excess of one year from causing the deficiency of the next.
Far away in Egypt, prince, priest, and peasant look southwards with
anxious attention for the fluctuating yet certain rise. Gradually the
flood begins. The Bahr-el-Ghazal from a channel of stagnant pools and
marshes becomes a broad and navigable stream. The Sobat and the
Atbara from dry watercourses with occasional pools, in which the fish
and crocodiles are crowded, turn to rushing rivers. But all this is remote
from Egypt. After its confluence with the Atbara no drop of water
reaches the Nile, and it flows for seven hundred miles through the
sands or rushes in cataracts among the rocks of the Nubian desert.
Nevertheless, in spite of the tremendous diminution in volume caused
by the dryness of the earth and air and the heat of the sun--all of which
drink greedily--the river below Assuan is sufficiently great to supply
nine millions of people with as much water as their utmost science and
energies can draw, and yet to pour into the Mediterranean a low-water
surplus current of 61,500 cubic feet per second. Nor is its water its only

gift. As the Nile rises its complexion is changed. The clear blue river
becomes thick and red, laden with the magic mud that can raise cities
from the desert sand and make the wilderness a garden. The geographer
may still in the arrogance of science describe the Nile as 'a great,
steady-flowing river, fed by the rains of the tropics, controlled by the
existence of a vast head reservoir and several areas of repose, and
annually flooded by the accession of a great body of water with which
its eastern tributaries are flushed' [ENCYCLOPAEDIA
BRITANNICA]; but all who have drunk deeply of its soft yet fateful
waters--fateful, since they give both life and death--will understand
why the old Egyptians worshipped the river, nor will they even in
modern days easily dissociate from their minds a feeling of mystic
reverence.
South of Khartoum and of 'The Military Soudan' the land becomes
more fruitful. The tributaries of the Nile multiply the areas of riparian
fertility. A considerable rainfall, increasing as the Equator is
approached, enables the intervening spaces to support vegetation and
consequently human life. The greater part of the country is feverish and
unhealthy, nor can Europeans long sustain the attacks of its climate.
Nevertheless it is by no means valueless. On the east the province of
Sennar used to produce abundant grain, and might easily produce no
less abundant cotton. Westward the vast territories of Kordofan and
Darfur afford grazing-grounds to a multitude of cattle, and give means
of livelihood to great numbers of Baggara or cow-herd Arabs, who may
also pursue with activity and stratagem the fleet giraffe and the still
fleeter ostrich. To the south-east lies Bahr-el-Ghazal, a great tract of
country occupied by dense woods and plentifully watered. Further
south and nearer the Equator the forests and marshes become exuberant
with tropical growths, and the whole face of the land is moist and green.
Amid groves of gigantic trees and through plains of high waving grass
the stately elephant roams in herds which occasionally number four
hundred, hardly ever disturbed by a well-armed hunter. The ivory of
their tusks constitutes the wealth of the Equatorial Province. So greatly
they abound that Emin Pasha is provoked to complain of a pest of these
valuable pachyderms [LIFE OF EMIN PASHA, vol.i chapter ix.]: and
although they are only assailed by the natives with