200 " CREWE JUNCTION " OF THE NILE debouches into the Nile, and it marks the most southerly point of the great section styled the Bahr-el-Abiad (White River). The Sobat meets the joint streams of the Bahr-el-Gebel (INIountain River) and the Bahr-el-Ghazal coming in from the west, almost face to face, the course then being deflected northwards.

At the junction is the site of a late Dervish fort, commanding the three waterways. It had been hoped that the Sobat would develop into the most important route into Abyssinia. Steamers ply for a long distance along its course, and a trade centre has been leased by the Sudan Government at Gambela, in Abyssinian territory. But navigation in the upper reaches is too uncertain for full use, and there is some disappointment.

Some few miles up the river is the American Mission among the Shilluks, and far away up is the spot where poor General Gatacre died, lonely and unattended. There is something peculiarly striking in the fact that his grave should be made at so isolated a spot in the land which his great energies aided in rescuing.

It is perhaps appropriate at this point to refer roughly to the general scheme of the Nile and its tributaries in reference to the life-giving flood which renders Egypt a land of prosperity rather than desert. But for its tributaries cultivation would be confined to the narrowest limits, for the amount of effluent from the stream south of the Sobat varies but little the whole round of the year, on