Abstract
ONE feature about this and all other recent books dealing with the Egyptian Sudan which arrests the attention is the singular lack of picturesque scenery characteristic of this vast region away from the frontiers of Abyssinia or the temples and rocks of Dongola. Apparently one has to reach almost to the verge of the Congo Basin on the south-west, or to enter the Uganda Protectorate on the south, before the eye is gratified by remarkable landscapes. Even the river-courses outside desert influence are poor and unimpressive in their vegetation as compared with Equatorial, West, and South Central Africa. The branching dum palms, with their half-circle fronds, an occasional monstrous baobab or banyan-like fig-tree—perchance a clump of tall acacias in the gracious aspect of the rainy season—alone relieve the monotony of grassy plain and stony, sun-smitten wastes; while, of course, a considerable portion of the area of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is swamp, and swamp which is singularly unprepossessing, for it offers an unbroken horizon of dull bluish-green, unmarked by a single palm-tree or other noteworthy object.
Article PDF
References
"In the Torrid Sudan.” By H. Lincoln Tangye . Pp. xii+300. (London: J. Murray, 1910.) Price 12s. net.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
JOHNSTON, H. In the Torrid Sudan 1 . Nature 83, 491–492 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/083491a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/083491a0