The Geographical Journal (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society): Volume XVI, No. 6 [‎349r] (50/232)

AN EXPEDITION BETWEEN LAKE RUDOLF AND THE NILE.
623
despatches to Captain Dugmore, three months old, that “ sudd ” cutting
had been begun on the Nile, I kept my men for nearly a month at the
post, hoping that a steamer would come up the river and take us out via
Omdurman. But on April 13, I found it necessary to send Mr. Frazer
with all my men to Mombasa, except my cook and my bright Gurkha
orderly, Hasap Singh. Famine was raging throughout the upper Nile
districts, and had it not been for the great kindness of the Belgians in
giving me grain, I could not have kept my men at all. I was obliged to
remain longer myself, since I could get no transport for my collections
and kit; and I had just made arrangements with the Belgians to go down
THE NILE AT FORT BERKELEY.
the Congo, a journey of four months in the rains, to the west coast,
when, to my joy, Major Peake turned up in a gunboat, after having cut
through the “ sudd,” and most kindly took me away with him on May 5,
on his homeward journey of 1100 miles to Omdurman.
I reached Cairo the beginning of June, just ten months from the time
of starting from the Somali coast for the interior, and a fortnight later
found mein London with my collections safely installed at the British
Museum of Natural History, to which I am presenting the most valuable
of my specimens. The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
will also receive a large share. The collections include several hundred
different species of birds, mammalia, plants, reptilia and batrachia,
fishes, butterflies, etc.—a good number of them new to science.