Page:The empire and the century.djvu/827

 Again, for many miles, the high land recedes from the channel, and the river wanders sluggishly through wide, shallow, and reedy lakes, the haunt of the hippotamus [sic], the crocodile, and a myriad water-fowl.

Eventually, after the narrow gut of Wadelai and the fever-stricken post of Dufile have been left behind, the grand range of the Kuku Mountains approaches the valley on me west, and diverts its course. A few miles further on—at the British post of Nimuli—it turns sharply to the north-west, and enters afresh upon a region of cataracts and rapids, which for the next hundred miles obstruct its flow, and render its course a tempestuous one.

Throughout this portion of the Nile Valley the river scenery presents a series of beautiful pictures. The mountains bar the stream on the west, rising almost vertically, with scarred and scarped faces, like a Titanic wall. To the east low, wooded hills run parallel to the river—at times, little more than stony ridges, but occasionally rising some hundred feet above the water. Many tributaries join the main river here, unfordable torrents during the rainy season, but for the rest of the year deep and ragged gashes in the general surface level, the boulders in their dry beds heap up in indescribable confusion.

The channel of the Nile is much broken by rocks and islands, and the rapids follow one another in constant succession. Both banks are fringed with a dense belt of bush and high reeds. Looking down any one of these reaches, the tumbling, indigo-coloured water, streaked with foamy threads of white, the purple background of hill and mountain, the sombre greens of the forests and the lighter tints of the reeds, with the brilliant blue of the sky overhead, present a combination of wild river scenery not often to be met with, and not easily to be forgotten. Occasionally, the remains of old forts and entrenchments are to be seen, crowning the summits of rocky elevations which command the stream. Some of these ruins bear historic names, such, for