The projects include schemes for the regulation of the Great Lakes on the highlands of Central Africa, to make them serve as reservoirs for the Nile. They include, also, plans for the embankment of the tributaries of the White Nile flowing through the great swamps on the northern slope of the Congo watershed, and the digging of over two hundred miles of new channel, whereby the main stream of the White Nile will be greatly shortened and its bed fitted to carrying the enormous volume of its waters down to Khartum. Another scheme contemplates the erection of a dam at Lake Tsana, on the highlands of Abyssinia, which will make that lake a reservoir for the Blue Nile and enable it to water the fertile plain which lies between the Blue and White Niles, ending at Khartum. The great trouble now is that a large part of the waters of the Nile go to waste, particularly in the swamps of the Sudd region. These mighty swamps lie on the northern slope of the Congo watershed and are fed by the branches of the White Nile known as the Bahr el Jebel, the Bahr el Ghazal, and the Bahr el Zaraf. They begin where the River Sobat flows into the Nile and form an irregular triangle, the base running from that point two hundred miles westward, with the southern apex at Bor, which is two or three hundred miles farther south. They lie on the bed of what in prehistoric times was a great lake, and are composed of masses of reeds, papyrus, and other swamp grasses, so interlaced that they soak up the water like a huge sponge. Imagine a sponge as big as the State of Indiana, from two to six feet in thickness, and so situated that it is always filled by the waters of the Nile and you will have some idea of this region. This sponge is near the Equator where the tropical sun beats down upon it, so that steam is always rising. It sucks up the waters of the Nile and gives them out into the air. The evaporation in the Sudd and along the courses of the Nile is so great that an amount equal to half the capacity of the Aswan reservoir is lost every day. In the summer fully fifty per cent. of the water supplied by the Great Lakes never gets into the main stream of the Nile. The water of this swamp is nowhere much above a man’s head, and in most places, except where the main stream flows through, it is only waist-deep. The evaporation increases at the time of the flood, when more land is covered, so that no matter how much water flows into the swamp, only about the same amount flows out. The vast masses of floating weeds break up and burst into the channels, and when an obstruction is encountered they pile up on one another just as ice does. In the hot, dry season, when the stems of the papyrus are ten or fifteen feet high, the natives start fires which sweep the region from end to end, destroying all other vegetation. The ashes and burnt stems add to the floating mass, which after a time becomes five or six feet in thickness and almost like peat.