The further I ascend the Sobàt, the plainer I perceive why the right shore just behind Khartùm appears higher than the left, and why I could not get rid of the idea that this oblique inclination of the land was in opposition to the course and the mouth of the Nile, but still might be explained. The deposit of particles of earth and sand can only come from above, and will always try to level and equalise the tracts of land which the Nile covers with showers of rain, brooks, and rivulets. It is clear that the surface is elevated by that means, and that, where these washed-away and liquid particles of earth reach a stream like the White Nile, they are carried down by it, without the other shore (the left side of the Nile here) deriving naturally any advantages therefrom. The high mountain chain of Fàzogl and Habesh mixed, as I conjecture, its collective waters, owing to a breach in its partition-walls, and their slime and morasses, and perhaps entire hills of decayed and corrupted matter connected therewith, filled depths in the lower valley on the side of the Nile up to the Delta—its most famous memorial,—and levelled the mountains of the neighbourhood, when Bertat, Dinka, and the country between the Sobàt and Bari rivers might have shot up in indomitable strength like artesian wells. Such catastrophes roll mountains and masses like a brook does its little pebbles, and throw up the water released from confinement in the cavities of heights which attract and collect it. A flood of liquid earth rolled then far and wide from the mountains without order and with numerous arms, but conformably to nature, the heavy particles sank. The water itself washed away, smoothed and levelled the ground. Therefore now we perceive those immeasurable plains on the Sobàt, whereon beasts cannot hide themselves, and which would be without shelter in the rainy season, if there were not mountains and forests in the neighbourhood.