Precisely on the points where the Lake Tsana scheme is weakest the schemes for utilizing one or both of the great lakes of Uganda are strongest. Precisely where it is strong they are weakest. Any works damming the exits of Lake Victoria Nyanza or Lake Albert would be wholly within British territory. They would also be in a region much more easily accessible from the sea. Lake Victoria has already railway communication with Mombasa, and the transport of material, and also of coolie labour from India would be comparatively easy. In the case of Lake Albert, a railway would have to be built from Lake Victoria; but this would be of service to the country apart from any irrigation works, and would, indeed, practically establish through communication by boat and railway between Mombasa and Alexandria. But here their advantages over Lake Tsana end. The whole region is very much subject to earthquakes. The strain to which great masonry works would be subjected might be very severe. The country through which the White Nile passes is very unsuited to large irrigation works. Much of it is swamp, and the low slope of the land is ill-adapted for canals. The soil, too, is poor and light compared with the rich alluvial tracts on the Blue Nile, which would of course receive no benefit. Practically only the provinces north of Khartoum would receive any benefit from the increased supply, and in them the cultivable land can never be more than a mere strip along the river, so circumscribed are they by the desert ridges. In any case they would be equally benefited by water coming from the Blue Nile. Besides this, the negro population living on the White Nile is very much less advanced, and less likely to form an industrious agricultural population than the inhabitants of the Eastern Soudan. Nor is the bed of the White Nile well adapted for carrying the water. From Lake Albert to Khartoum the distance is 2,100 kilometres, and the total drop is only 300 metres. It flows slower through a hotter country. Except between Duffile and Rejaf it is very wide and shallow, without any banks to speak of, and with a sandy or muddy bottom. For at least half its course it runs through swamps, and between Bor and Lake No alone it is calculated to lose half its volume by dissipation and evaporation in the marshes. But for the important contribution made by the Sobat, the volume reaching Khartoum would be very much smaller than it is. If, then, a considerable extra supply of water is to be brought down from the equatorial lakes, the scheme must involve a permanent improvement in the channel of the Bahr el Gebel, as the upper portion of the White Nile is called.