Stanley and the white heroes in Africa; being an edition from Mr Stanley's late personal writings on the Emin Pasha relief expedition .. . together as to re-mind him of a thick mass of fungus. He reckoned that theremust be nearly a hundred districts containing from fifty to onehundred villages each. This estimate was found to be toogreat, when the Egyptian government came to enumerate thevillages and the people; of the former, it was found that therewere three thousand, with about one million tAvo hundredthousand inhabitants. It is the most densely populated partof Africa known to us, not even
Stanley and the white heroes in Africa; being an edition from Mr Stanley's late personal writings on the Emin Pasha relief expedition .. . together as to re-mind him of a thick mass of fungus. He reckoned that theremust be nearly a hundred districts containing from fifty to onehundred villages each. This estimate was found to be toogreat, when the Egyptian government came to enumerate thevillages and the people; of the former, it was found that therewere three thousand, with about one million tAvo hundredthousand inhabitants. It is the most densely populated partof Africa known to us, not even the Valley of the Nile beingexcepted. Like most African tribes which wear but scanty clothing,the Shillooks spend much time and care upon their head-dress ; the aim of all being, apparently, to render themselvesas ridiculous-looking as possible. This result is attained invarious ways, the wool being sometimes fashioned into theshape of a helmet, sometimes of a comb or a fan. Occasion-ally the traveler found a man with several combs arranged inparallel lines upon his head. The White Nile is formed by the confluence of two streams,15. SCHWEINFURTH IX THE HEART OF AFRICA. 229 the Bahr-el-Ghazal and the Bahr-el-Gebel. The latter wasconsidered by Speke and Baker as the main stream of theNile; the first-named explorer speaking of 1 he Bahr-el-Ghazal,or Gazelle River, as an unimportant stream. This judgmentSchweinfurth condemns, believing that it is the Gazelle whichis the main branch, draining a country of about one hundredand fifty thousand square miles. This difference in judgmentis perhaps due to the difference of the seasons at which thetwo travelers viewed the rivers in question. The Gazelle is unnavigable by reason of the grass-tangle,which, beginning in the White Nile below the mouth of thisafiluent, is so thick that, at the point where the Gazelle de-bouches, Schweinfurth was six days in pushing his waythrough it into the tributary stream; and increasing in densityas the Gaz
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