I shall
therefore try to force the steamer through. Thirty-two men reported on
the sick list this evening.
"March 10. - A fine north wind for about half an hour, when it suddenly
chopped round to the S.E. We cut on far ahead, so that I was able to
push on the steamers and the whole fleet for a distance of about five
miles. I had a touch of fever.
"March 11. - Frightful stinking morass. All stopped at a black muddy pond
in the swamp. The river is altogether lost. We have to cut a passage
through the morass. Hard work throughout the day. One soldier died of
sunstroke. No ground in which to bury him.
"It is a curious but most painful fact that the entire White Nile has
ceased to be a navigable river. The boundless plains of marsh are formed
of floating rafts of vegetation compressed into firm masses by the
pressure of water during floods. So serious is this obstacle to
navigation, that unless a new channel can be discovered, or the original
Nile be reopened, the centre of Africa will be entirely shut out from
communication, and all my projects for the improvement of the country
will be ruined by this extraordinary impediment.
"March 12. - I think I can trace by telescope the fringe of tall papyrus
rush that should be the border of the White Nile; but this may be a
delusion. The wind is S.W., dead against us. Many men are sick owing to
the daily work of clearing a channel through the poisonous marsh. This
is the Mahommedan festival of the Hadj, therefore there is little work
to-day.
"March 13. - Measured 460 yards of apparently firm marsh, through which
we plumbed the depth by long poles thrust to the bottom.
"Flowing water being found beneath, I ordered the entire force to turn
out and cut a channel, which I myself superintended in the advance boat.
"By 6 p.m. the canal was completed, and the wind having come round to
the north, we sailed through the channel and entered a fine lake about
half a mile wide, followed by the whole fleet with bugles and drums
sounding the advance, the troops vainly hoping that their work was over.
The steamers are about a mile behind, and I have ordered their paddles
to be dismounted to enable them to be towed through the high grass in
the narrow channel.
"March 14. - At 6 a.m. I started and surveyed the lake in a small rowing
boat, and found it entirely shut in and separated from another small
lake by a mass of dense rotten vegetation about eighty yards in width. I
called all hands, and cleared it in fifty-five minutes sufficiently to
allow the fleet to pass through.
