207 APPENDIX I.

THE SUDD, AND METHODS FOR DEALING WITH IT.

De. Junker writes as follows :— " Before leaving this watery domain, a few words may be acceptable regarding the formation of the sudd in the Upper Nile regions. How disastrous such obstructions maj \t times prove, was shown by the fatal issue of the voyt'e undertaken the same year by Gessi Pasha from Mesnra er Beq to Khartum. The steamer Safia had left Meshra on September 25th, 1880, taking in tow some boats with over 400 Arabs and officials, leaving the Bahr el Ghazal province after the war with Soliman, and the whole flotilla got completely hemmed in by a grass-barrier near the Ghaba Jer Dekka, some distance below the Bahr el Arab confluence. All efforts to get disentangled were in vain ; provisions soon fell short ; famine and typhus combined swept away over half of the men ; the others lived on the flesh of the dead, and not one of them would have ever seen Khartum again had not Marno appeared with the steamer Bordein as an angel of deliverance on January 4th, 1881, bringing succour to the survivors after months of unspeakable horrors and misery. " As regards the firmness of their texture, the grassbarriers show considerable diversity. Some are loose enough to be forced by a powerful steamer at the cost of much patience, toil, and help, while others resist all such efforts. The latter type is more easily developed in the Bahr el Jebel, which abounds far more than the Bahr el Ghazal in isolated or stagnant backwaters and lateral lagoons. Such tenacious masses are, in fact, more frequently formed in the Bahr el Jebel, while the looser kinds are more characteristic of the Bahr el Ghazal.

" It is abundantly evident that the vegetation itself does not spring up spontaneously on the spot where it