Geology -- Egypt; Nile River; Water-supply -- Egypt
In 1900 and 1901 Major Peake, C. M. G., R. A., and Lieut. Drury, R. N.,
removed sudd blocks Nos. 1 to 14, and 16 to 19, between Lake No and
Ghaba Shambe. There now remains only block No. 15 south of
Hillet-el-Nuer.
The condition of the channel to-day has been described under the heading
of the Albert Nile. It is a very fair channel except at the diversion
round block No. 15, which Sir William Garstin is very eager to see
removed.
18. =The White Nile.=--The White Nile stretches from the Sobat mouth to
Khartoum and has a length of 838 kilometres and very little fall. It
everywhere bears traces of having been the channel of the Blue Nile when
in ancient times the Gebel-Royan hill had not been cut through by the
Nile, and the Blue Nile itself flowed south into the great lake which is
to-day the sudd region of the Albert Nile. If the Blue Nile discharged,
as it does to-day, about 2500 cubic metres per second throughout the
year, the Sobat 600 cubic metres, the Albert Nile 1000, the Gazelle
tributaries 700, and the rainfall on the lake itself was 1 metre per
annum, while the evaporation was 2¹⁄₂ metres, (all reasonable figures),
the water entering the lake was 300 cubic kilometres per annum and the
evaporation was the same, provided the lake had an area of 120,000
square kilometres, which is, moreover, reasonable when we examine the
plan. During the whole of this period, the valley of the Nile in Egypt
received its water from the Atbara alone.
The waters of the Sobat river in flood give its name to the White Nile.
At Tewfikieh, near the head of the White Nile, is a gauge. For the first
500 kilometres the river is described by Sir William Garstin as having a
waterway of from 300 to 500 metres in width with numerous islands. The
depth of water in summer is 5 metres and 7 metres in flood. On either
side of the waterway is a low ridge swamped in flood, and beyond that on
either side is a deep depression, deep in the centre and rising to the
ridge on one side and to the high land and forest on the other. Each
depression may be 3 kilometres in width where it is wide and a few
hundred metres where it is narrow, so that the flooded valley may have a
width of 6 kilometres in places. The ridges are about 3 metres wide, and
broken by openings through which the water passes in and out of the side
marshy depressions. The depressions are covered by a dense growth of
reeds and papyrus. When the reeds are burnt one can traverse the marshes
on foot. South of Kaka (200 kilometres north of the Sobat mouth) the
depressions are lower than they are further north, which, to me, goes to
prove that the channel of to-day is formed within the channel of old
days when the Blue Nile was flowing south into the Sudd region. At
Gebelain (250 kilometres north of Kaka) the side depressions contract
and the forests come nearer the river. At the Abu Zeid ford, 50
kilometres further to the north, is a serious obstacle to navigation
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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