advance of the Roman centurions
who were sent up the Nile in the days of Nero. Sir Samuel Baker was
the one who first pointed out the great disadvantage of allowing the
vegetable matter to accumulate, both to merchants and to those who were
employed to suppress the slave-trade. In the year 1863 the two branches
of the White Nile were blocked above their junction at Lake No. Once
blocked, the accumulation rapidly increased from the stoppage of outlet,
forming the innumerable floating islands which at this part of the Nile
customarily float down-stream. A marsh of vast extent had been
formed, and to all appearance, as Baker narrates, the White Nile had
disappeared. Baker cut through fifty miles of the sudd, and urged the
khedive to reopen the Nile. The work was successfully undertaken by
Ishmail Ayub Pasha, and the White Nile became clear for large vessels
when Gordon reached Khartum in 1874. It is practically impossible to
keep the central provinces of the Nile open to civilisation unless
the course of the Nile is free. Yet in 1878 the obstruction had been
renewed, and during the occupation of these provinces by the rebel
dervishes under the Mahdi and the califa the Nile was completely
blocked, as formerly, at Lake No. The alarming failure of the Nile flood
in 1899--1900 was generally attributed to this blockade, and in
1899 fifty thousand dollars was placed at the disposal of the
governor-general for reopening the White Nile by removing the vast
accumulation of sudd which blocked the Bahr-el-Jebel from Lake No almost
as far as Shambeh. The work was started under the direction of Sir
William Garstin in 1899. In 1900 the greater part of the sudd had been
removed by the strenuous labours of Major Peake, and the Nile again
became navigable from Khartum to Rejaf. The sudd was found to be piled
up and of almost as close a structure as peat. It was sawn out in blocks
ten feet square and carried away by gunboats. In the years 1901--02
further progress was made, and twenty thousand dollars appropriated
for the work; and by means of constant patrolling the sudd is now
practically absent from the whole course of the White Nile.

The discharge of the flood waters from the Upper Nile begins to make
itself felt in Lower Nubia and Egypt in the month of June, at first
slightly, and after the middle of July much more rapidly, the river
continuing to rise steadily till the first week in October, when it
reaches high-water mark, nearly f