FAREWELL TO UGANDA. 263 On December 9th I left Mruli for Foweira, travelling down the Nile in native dug-out canoes. Having embarked from the landing-stage on the bank of the Kafur, a few hundred yards brought us to the Nile.

It was my first view of the Nile, as such. I have sailed many hundreds of miles over the lake that gives it birth, and know all its various moods, by day and by night, in cloud and in sunshine, in storm and in calm ; I have stood on the watershed that divides the streams which nourish its young life, from those which roll their waters to the Indian Ocean ; I have seen it hurl itself, foaming and roaring, through the chasm that forms the eighth cataract ; I have seen it winding its way through the sandy desert ; I have watched it mingling its waters with those of its sister stream, the Blue Nile ; I have seen it flowing past the busy haunts of men, and the mighty Pyramids, and at last lose itself in the blue waters of the Mediterranean, more than 3000 miles from its cradle : but I shall never forget my first sight of it. The river was here half a mile wide, flowing in a northerly direction ; the western bank was low, and fringed with papyrus ; the eastern bank was higher, and covered with open forest of mimosas and acacias ; a delicate convolvulus wove its tangled meshes among the shrubs that bent over the water ; purple waterlilies dotted the still creeks ; thousands of the little cabbage-like Pistia stratiotes floated down the stream, vast numbers of water-birds perched among the reeds,