The Dry Crossing of the Nile

Abstract

IN Nature of November 6, 1937, p. 811, and September 24, 1938, p. 576, letters were published on the ‘Dry Crossing of the Nile'. This crossing was a mass of floating vegetation where the river is 80 yards across, and the bridge was about 250 yards from its upstream to its downstream edge. It was sufficiently strong for elephants to cross. A photograph taken by Dr. Alexander Cruickshank, from whom these particulars were obtained, was reproduced. My son, Colonel F. O. Cave, has obtained further particulars from Mr. Siricio Iro, a member of the Sudan Legislative Assembly, whose home is in the neighbourhood of the crossing, from which it appears that grass, trees and vegetation, brought down by floods, are held up by a large rock in mid-stream which acts as a foundation for the bridge, which apparently lasts until the vegetation over the rock has rotted. The last two bridges remained intact for eight and ten years respectively, the last one being washed away in 1946. Further local information indicates that the bridge started to reform in July 1948 but was washed away again by very heavy floods in the following October. A Sudan official who walked along the banks of the Nile from Nimule to Juba in March 1949 saw no sign of a dry crossing.