At its junction with the Sobat river, the Albert Nile discharges from 300 to 450 cubic metres in summer; it does not discharge much more in flood as the waters of the Sobat river in flood hold up the Albert River and make it overflow the low lands up to Lake No and beyond for a depth of 3 metres in high floods. This reach of the Nile is a flood reservoir, which empties itself ordinarily by the end of winter. 14. =The Gazelle River.=--The Gazelle river, which flows into Lake No, has a catchment basin of 240,000 square kilometres, with an annual rainfall of 75 millimetres; and an additional catchment basin of 230 square kilometres with an annual rainfall of 30 millimetres; and yet the river discharges nothing in summer and about 40 cubic metres per second in flood. It is the most extraordinary river in the world, often blocked by sudd and invisible. It has practically no banks in flood or in times of low supply, while the waterway varies in width from 6 metres to 90 and in depth from 2 metres to 6 metres. It makes its way between interminable marshes of papyrus and water grasses. The Gazelle river is a deltaic river in a still more embryonic stage than the Albert Nile north of Ghaba Shambe. It, however, performs one good function. It keeps the swamps of the Sudd region full of water, year in and year out; and without it, the water of the Albert Nile would doubtless be lost by percolation in the Sudd region and the White Nile be left high and dry for 3 months every year. Schweinfurth was the first to ascend and describe this river and its tributaries. Beginning from the east, its principal tributaries are:--the Rohl, the Dyow, the Tondy, the Kit, the Dyûr, the Dembo, the Humr and the Bahr el Arab. With courses of between 450 and 750 kilometres in length, the tributaries fall from 500 to 700 metres in their upper courses of from 300 to 500 kilometres, and in their remaining courses they traverse swamps. Certain of the tributaries may be discharging 10 cubic metres per second in summer and 250 cubic metres per second in flood, but the main stream of the Gazelle seems never to add more than 40 cubic metres per second to the Albert Nile. The whole of the water is evaporated from the weeds, papyrus, watergrasses and open sheets of water which cover a desolate area of 70,000 square kilometres. Evaporation and rainfall balance each other. If the «Singhara» or Indian water nut could be induced to grow in this waste of waters, some profit might be got out of them.