Page:The empire and the century.djvu/861

 Again the banks stand high and well defined, giraffes browse on the flat-topped acacias, and here and there a Shilluk village is perched above flood-water mark.

The 400-mile long swamp is left behind, and the Nile, limpid and free from silt, slides, a broad oily sheet, past Fashoda's mud-bank, by the encampments of Baggara Arabs, near Dejebel Ain, a long 600 miles to where Khartoum broods over the Blue Nile.

And so a thousand miles through pink deserts backed by violet hills, past date-palms and the Arabs' yard-wide strip of green, beneath changeless temples, tombs, cities, and the awesome relics of the infinitely old, the Nile flows; as a last after-thought begets Egypt's wealth, and Karissimbi's snows have joined the sea.

Such was the Nile when I, first of all men, saw the source issue, drop by drop, from Karissimbi's moss.

Now at Assouan the Nile is tamed. A palace, college, hotels, and bungalows have usurped the mud-heaps of Khartoum; the sudd has yielded to the white man's will, and steamers pant fortnightly past the Lado Fort; bullock-waggons astonish the rhinoceroses of Wadelai; prospectors are chipping rocks on Ruwenzori's flanks; and the German scientist is hunting bugs on Karissimbi's slopes.

The shroud of a million years is rent.

The Britisher is abroad.

Old Father Nile! Tush! 'tis a coming highroad of the world.