GREAT FLOATING ISLANDS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16465, 29 June 1921, Page 6

GREAT FLOATING ISLANDS.

THE SUDD OF THE NILE. BARRIERS OF VEGETATION. The heavy rains in the region of the great lakes of Africa which occur about April, carry down into the White Nile —the part south of Khartoum—-great floating masses cf water weeds and plants. These are known as the sudd, and a very amazing work of nature it is. The country along the banks of the Upper Nile is an immense swamp in which grow vast masses of papyrus reed, the plant from which the earliest paper was made. Often the reeds grow fifteen or twenty' feet high. During the storms of wind and rain, very frequent at this season, largo mantities of papyrus are torn up by tho roots and sent floating down trio river with quantities of earth bouna together bv the roots. As it travels it collects other plants and is reinforced bv tree trunks and branches until enormous floating islands are formed, sometimes o 0 miles long, as wide as the river, and 20ft deep. The flow of the river is impeded, and the water spreads out on either side until what was once a river becomes little more than a moving swamp. There is no remedv but to cut up the sudd and drag it out of the fiver, air'd this is what is now done regularly every year under British direction. The floating wood is first set alight, and when all that will burn has been fired, tiie remainder is out up into blocks about 10ft square and dragged out on to the banks with wire hawsers and chains. . A factory at Khartoum dries the weed, reduces it to a powder, and then presses it into brieklets to be used as fuel bv the Nile steamers. Mon of science ai'c also busiiv at work trying to find some other use for the sudd. Only by the most strenuous exertion can the upper Nile be kept clear for navigation. The sudd has been known for at least 2000 years. Nero sent two officers to explore the Nile, and tney were stopped b> this barrier of vegetation, und later explorers tell the same story. The pressure of tiie water makes the mass so solid that men can walk on it, and even elephants have been seen to cross the river on the sudd. Sir Samuel Baker, who in his journeys up the Ni\e on behalf of the Egyptian Government had to set hundreds ol men to work cutting passages through the sudd for his steamers, tells how on one occasion the men suddenly came upon something struggling beneath their feet. \\ hen they had cqt away some of the weeds, to their alarm tiiey found that the moving object was a big crocodile imprisoned in the sudd. Even with hundreds of workers armed with sriarp bili-hooits and sabres only 3UO yards of sudd could be cut through in a day, and there were fifty miles in one continuous stretch. It was the Samuel Baker’s suggestion that the Egyptian Government began to clear the tipper Nile, but the advent of tho Alalidi stopped it for some years. Since 1900, however, the sudd is attacked regularly every year. Sudd comes from an Arabic word, meaning obstacle or barrier.