17 degrees 37 minutes N. is thus, in a direct line from
Alexandria, about 840 geographical miles of latitude,
And, including the
westerly bend of the Nile, its bed will be about eleven hundred miles in
length from the mouth of its last tributary, the Atbara, until it meets
the sea. Thus, eleven hundred miles of absorption and evaporation
through sandy deserts and the delta must be sustained by the river
between the Atbara junction and the Mediterranean: accordingly there is
an immense loss of water; and the grandest volume of the Nile must be
just below the Atbara junction.
It is not my intention in the present work to enter into the details of
my first year's exploration on the Abyssinian frontier; that being so
extensive and so completely isolated from the grand White Nile
expedition, that an amalgamation of the two would create confusion. I
shall therefore reserve the exploration of the Abyssinian tributaries
for a future publication, and confine my present description of the
Abyssinian rivers to a general outline of the Atbara and Blue Nile,
showing the origin of their floods and their effect upon the inundations
in Lower Egypt.
I followed the banks of the Atbara to the junction of the Settite or
Taccazy river; I then followed the latter grand stream into the
Abyssinian mountains in the Base country. From thence I crossed over to
the rivers Salaam and Angrab, at the foot of the magnificent range of
mountains from which they flow direct into the Atbara.
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