112 UGANDA AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN of the Shoe, on account of his large curious beak. We knew that he was a rare bird, but all efforts to shoot him were fruitless. The only other birds seen in any numbers on the marshes of the Nile are the stork and the Plotus melanogaster, a diving bird.

It will readily be understood that at the rise and fall of the Nile, which occur annually after the great tropical rains, this mass of grass on its surface must also rise and fall. As a consequence, large and small quantities of its substance are torn away from the sides of the water-channel by the force of the current, and float down-stream, getting broken up finally between Fashoda and Khartoum. If reference be made to Mr. Wilson's account of the Victoria Nyanza, it will be found that in the spring of 1878, i.e. in the wet season immediately preceding my departure from Khartoum, there was an unusually heavy rainfall. He noticed that in consequence of the rains the Lake was several feet above the normal level ; and as the Nile is fed from this great reservoir, it was, that season, not only unusually high, but its impetus was greatly increased. It followed that, owing to this increase of bulk and rapidity in the stream, larger masses than usual of grass were torn away and sent floating down the river by thousands. The channel of the river (not its true banks) is very tortuous, and at Lake No, where the Bahr-el-Ghazel flows into the Nile, there is a sharp.