THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN that he made up his mind that the springs which Bruce had discovered near the village of Gish in Abyssinia were the source of the Blue Nile only. At this time it is difficult to understand how Bruce can ever have laid claim to have discovered the source of the Nile, and how he can have been satisfied to ignore the information possessed by the natives, with which he must have been acquainted, to the effect that the White Nile was both longer and more constant in its flow than the Blue Nile. We should expect a man who enjoyed a reputation for thoroughness at least to have tested the truth of ancient and modern bfelief and tradition, which, after all, in such cases is usually based upon facts, before he committed himself to such definite assertions as to his discovery.

The crossing of the river to the point of land between the White and Blue Niles called Ras al-Khartum, or simply Al-Khart<im, was not accomplished without difficulty, and Cailliaud draws a vivid picture of the way in which the Egyptian Army sent up by Muhammad All to occupy the Sudan, managed it. For three whole days the surface of the river for a considerable distance up and down stream was covered with camels, horses, Turks, and Arabs, all in an indescribable state of noise and confusion, and all struggling to reach the opposite bank. Some of the soldiers swam across, others supported themselves on blown-up skins and pieces of wood, others clung to their horses' tails, or climbed on the backs of camels. In this way five thousand five hundred men crossed the river ; thirty men and one hundred and fifty camels and horses were drowned, and the only thing to be wondered at is that the loss was not greater. When Cailliaud reached Soba, a few miles up the Blue Nile on the east bank, he disembarked and succeeded in obtaining a horse and a guide, who led him to the ruins of the old town, but he was considerably disappointed with what he saw there. He found nothing but heaps of earth and pieces of stone, and not a single fragment of any size. He made the tour of the old town, the extent of which is still plainly discernible, and among the rubbish in the centre he found a sphinx, made of black quartzite sandstone, hewn in the Egyptian style. Cailliaud's examination of the ruins of Soba cannot have been very thorough, for when I visited them in 1903, under the able guidance of the Mudir of Khartum, Colonel E. A. Stanton, the remains of the side buildings of several of the 42