Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 30, 2025
I found tracks of hippopotami upon the high grassy hills; these animals climb up the most difficult places during the night, when they ascend from the river to seek for pasturage. I was not far from the tent when I arrived at the junction of the Angrab with the Bahr Salaam, but the rivers were both sunk in stupendous precipices, so that it was impossible to descend.
The rivers Settite, Salaam, and Angrab, although much reduced, are nevertheless perennial streams, flowing into the Atbara from the lofty Abyssinian mountains; but the parched, sandy bed of the latter river absorbs the entire supply, nor does one drop of water reach the Nile from the Atbara during the dry season.
The noble Atbara, whose course we had tracked for hundreds of weary miles, and whose tributaries we had so carefully examined, was here a second-class mountain torrent, about equal to the Royan, and not to be named in comparison with the Salaam or Angrab.
I promised to represent his offer to the Governor-General on my arrival at Khartoum. He agreed to give me a guide to the rivers Angrab and Salaam, that were not far distant, and he at once pointed out to me the two dark gorges, about twelve and sixteen miles distant, in the chain of precipitous mountains from which they flowed.
From June to the middle of September the storms are terrific; every ravine becomes a raging torrent; trees are rooted up by the mountain streams swollen above their banks, and the Atbara becomes a vast river, bringing down with an overwhelming current the total drainage of four large rivers the Settite, Royan, Salaam, and Angrab in addition to its own original volume.
I went out to explore the country, and, steering due east, I arrived at the river Angrab or Angarep, three miles from the Salaam; from a high rock I could trace its course from the mountain gorge to this spot, the stream flowing N.W. This noble river or mountain torrent is about a hundred and fifty yards wide, although the breadth varies according to the character of the country through which it passes; in most places it rushes through frightful precipices; sometimes it is walled within a channel of only forty or fifty yards, and in such places the cliffs, although at least a hundred feet perpendicular height, bear the marks of floods that have actually overtopped the rocks, and have torn away the earth, and left masses of bamboos and withered reeds clinging to the branches of trees, which, growing on still higher rocks, have dipped in the swollen torrent.
Altogether, the two rivers Sahaam and Angrab are interesting examples of the destructive effect of water, that has during the course of ages cut through, and hollowed out in the solid rock, a succession of the most horrible precipices and caverns, in which the maddened torrents, rushing from the lofty chain of mountains, boil along until they meet the Atbara, and assist to flood the Nile.
I therefore agreed that he should accompany me until I should have sufficiently explored that river, after which I proposed to examine the rivers Salaam and Angrab, of which great tributaries of the Atbara nothing definite was known, except that they joined that river about fifty miles south of Sofi.
The next few days we spent in exploring the Salaam and Angrab rivers.
I explained that I was bound towards an unknown point, in search of the sources of the White Nile, which might occupy some years, but that I wished to perfect the exploration by the examination of all the Abyssinian Nile affluents: and I concluded by asking for his assistance in my journey to the Bahr Angrab and the Salaam.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking