and several areas of repose, and annually flooded by the accession of a
great body of water with which its eastern tributaries are flushed'
[ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA]; but all who have drunk deeply of its soft yet
fateful waters--fateful, since they give both life and death--will
understand why the old Egyptians worshipped the river, nor will they even
in modern days easily dissociate from their minds a feeling of mystic
reverence.

South of Khartoum and of 'The Military Soudan' the land becomes more
fruitful. The tributaries of the Nile multiply the areas of riparian
fertility. A considerable rainfall, increasing as the Equator is
approached, enables the intervening spaces to support vegetation and
consequently human life. The greater part of the country is feverish
and unhealthy, nor can Europeans long sustain the attacks of its climate.
Nevertheless it is by no means valueless. On the east the province of
Sennar used to produce abundant grain, and might easily produce no less
abundant cotton. Westward the vast territories of Kordofan and Darfur
afford grazing-grounds to a multitude of cattle, and give means of
livelihood to great numbers of Baggara or cow-herd Arabs, who may also
pursue with activity and stratagem the fleet giraffe and the still
fleeter ostrich. To the south-east lies Bahr-el-Ghazal, a great tract
of country occupied by dense woods and plentifully watered. Further
south and nearer the Equator the forests and marshes become exuberant
with tropical growths, and the whole face of the land is moist and green.
Amid groves of gigantic trees and through plains of high waving grass
the stately elephant roams in herds which occasionally number four
hundred, hardly ever disturbed by a well-armed hunter. The ivory of
their tusks constitutes the wealth of the Equatorial Province. So
greatly they abound that Emin Pasha is provoked to complain of a pest of
these valuable pachyderms [LIFE OF EMIN PASHA, vol.i chapter ix.]: and