314 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

whose source even the tribes that dwell in those far regions are ignorant. I am confident that when the hidden fountains shall at last he reached, and the problem of twenty centuries solved, the entire length of the Nile will be found to be not less than four thousand miles, and he will then take his rank with the Mississippi and the Amazon — a sublime trinity of streams ! There is, in some respects, a striking resemblance between the Nile and the former river. The Missouri is the true Mississippi, rolling the largest flood and giving his color to the mingled streams. So of the White Nile, which is broad and turbid, and pollutes the clear blue flood that has usurped his name and dignity. In spite of what geographers may say — and they are still far from being united on the subject — the Blue Nile is not the true Nile. There, at the point of junction his volume of water is greater,* but he is fresh from the mountains and constantly fed by large, unfailing affluents, while the White Nile has rolled for more than a thousand miles on nearly a dead level, through a porous, alluvial soil, in which he loses more water than he brings with him.

* Capt. Peel, who measured the volume of water in the two rivers, gives the following result: Breadth of the Blue Nile at Khartoum, *768 yards; average depth, 16.11 feet; average current, 1.564 knots; volume of water, 5,820,600 cubic feet per minute. Breadth of the "White Mle, immediately above the junction, 483 yards ; average depth, 13.92 feet; average current, 1.47 knots ; volume of water, 2,985,400 feet per minute.

Breadth of the Nile below the junction, 110*7 yards; average depth, 14.38 feet; average current, 2 knots; volume of water, 9,526/700 cubic feet per minute. This measurement was made in the latter part of October, 1851. It can hardly be considered conclusive, as during the preceding summer the rains had been unusually heavy in the mountains of Abyssinia, which may have occasioned a greater dispropoi'tion than usual, in the volume of the two rivers.