One of the objects contemplated in my journey was to show the importance of the western affluents of the Nile which unite in the Gazelle; and I have given evidence that, one way and another, they traverse a region of not less than 150,000 square miles. When I mention that in 1863 Speke called the Gazelle “an unimportant branch,”[11] and moreover that Baker has spoken of its magnitude with great depreciation, in reply, I might allude to another interesting fact in geographical annals. Not only did Bruce, a hundred years ago, suppose that he had discovered the sources of the Nile in Abyssinia, just where a hundred years previously they had been marked upon the Portuguese maps; but he represented the Bahr-el-Abiad as an inconsiderable stream, which joined the stream of his discovery at Halfaya, Khartoom at that time being not in existence. But it is absolutely impossible that Bruce could have returned from Sennaar to Berber along the left bank of the Blue Nile, and could have crossed at its mouth from the very spot where Khartoom now stands, without being aware that close behind him there was rolling its waters a stream as broad again as the Blue Nile. The record of his travels does not contain one word about the White Nile. The plain truth is that the White Nile was overlooked and disparaged, because it would have thrown his Blue Nile in the shade.[12] Ismail Pasha was quite right in saying that every fresh African traveller had his own private sources of the Nile; but for my part I am not at all ashamed to confess that I have not found them. The wind was favourable, and so long as the course maintained a north-westerly direction we made a rapid progress. The main channel gradually contracted, however, and deviated into many abrupt meanderings, which had to be traversed by pushing and driving with poles. Here, too, the apparent banks consisted of floating grass-tangle, though further off the pasturing herds of the Dinka showed the true position of the mainland, whilst the ridge of forest beyond indicated the limit to which the inundations had extended. North of the mouth of the Gazelle the boundaries of the Shillooks and the Dinka meet each other, and the intervening territory is inhabited by the Nueir. [Sidenote: A GHATTAS BIRD.]