Editing Lado Enclave (section)

==Geography==
[[File:Africa 1909, Edward Hertslet (Lado enclave, detail).jpg|thumb|right|Map of the Lado Enclave in 1909.]]
The enclave had an area of about {{convert|15000|sqmi|km2}}, a population of about 250,000 and had its capital at the town of [[Lado, South Sudan|Lado]] which is near to the modern-day city of [[Juba]]. Under the 1894 Anglo-Congolese Treaty, the enclave's territory was dictated as "bounded by a line starting from a point situated on the west shore of Lake Albert, immediately to the south of Mahagi, to the nearest point of the frontier defined in paragraph (a) of the preceding Article. Thence it shall follow the watershed between the Congo and the Nile up to the 25th meridian east of Greenwich, and that meridian up to its intersection by the 10th parallel north, whence it shall run along that parallel directly to a point to be determined to the north of Fashoda. Thence it shall follow the [[thalweg]] of the Nile southward to Lake Albert, and the western shore of Lake Albert to the point above indicated south of Mahagi."<ref>Gleichen, p. 286.</ref>

A landlocked territory, it was bordered on the north by the [[Anglo-Egyptian Sudan]] province of Bahr-el-Ghazal<ref>Gleichen, p. 1.</ref> and on the east by the Nile. The shifting sandbanks of the Nile led to islands on the border of the enclave and the Sudan regularly created or destroyed and made navigability difficult.<ref>Gleichen, p. 20.</ref>

Described variously as "a small muddy triangle along the Nile, ... a chain of desolate mudforts"<ref>Pakenham, p. 451.</ref> and "shaped like a leg of mutton".<ref>Pakenham, p. 525.</ref>

Lado was the largest town in the enclave, while [[Yei, South Sudan|Yei]], a fortified military station on the [[Yei River]], was considered the second most important town.<ref name=g279/> The northernmost post was [[Kiro]], on the west bank of the Nile nineteen kilometres above the British post at [[Mongalla, South Sudan|Mongalla]],<ref name="Gleichen, p. 153"/> while [[Dufile]], [[Ismailia]] and [[Wadelai]] were other settlements.<ref>Wilson & Ayerst, p. ii.</ref> English traveler Edward Fothergill visited the Sudan around 1901, basing himself at Mongalla between [[Lado, South Sudan|Lado]] to the south and Kiro to the north, but on the east shore of the river. By his account "Kiro, the most northern station of the Congo on the Nile, is very pretty and clean. Lado, the second station, is prettier still". However, he said that although the buildings were well made, they were too closely crowded together.<ref>{{cite web
 |url=http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/edward-fothergill/five-years-in-the-sudan-hto/page-10-five-years-in-the-sudan-hto.shtml
 |title=Five years in the Sudan |author=Edward Fothergill
 |publisher=Hurst & Blackett |year=1910}}</ref>

While a large percentage of its population were Indigenous inhabitants, many Bari left the enclave, escaping Congo Free State rule, and settled on the eastern (Sudanese) shore of the Nile.<ref name=g79/>

The enclave was an area of seismological activity, particularly around Rejaf (which means "earthquake" in [[Arabic language|Arabic]]).<ref name=Quake>Stigand (1916), p. 145.</ref> A fault line runs as a notable escarpment west of Rejaf south to Lake Albert, and while no major tremors occurred during the existence of the Lado Enclave, there was a noticeable earthquake in the region, centered on Rejaf, on 21 May 1914, which destroyed or damaged most of the buildings in the town.<ref name=Quake/>

===Fauna and flora===
The enclave was well known for its enormous herds of elephants<ref name="Buckley1931">{{cite journal |author=C.C. |title=Review: ''Big Game Hunting in Central Africa'' by W[illiam] Buckley |journal=The Geographical Journal |volume=77 |issue=3 |date=March 1931 |pages=275–276 |doi=10.2307/1783855 |jstor=1783855 |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_geographical-journal_1931-03_77_3/page/275/ |access-date=2024-01-11}}</ref> which drew [[big-game hunter]]s from around the world. Starting about six weeks after Leopold's death in December 1909,<ref name="Bell1923"/> from the years 1910 to 1912, hunters arrived in great numbers and shot thousands of elephants before Sudanese officials were able to take control of the area.<ref name="Buckley1931"/> One of the most prolific was the Scottish adventurer [[W. D. M. Bell]].<ref name="Bell1923">{{cite book |title=The Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter |chapter=The Lado Enclave |author=[[W. D. M. Bell]] |publisher=George Newnes |location=London |year=1923 |page=98 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/wanderingsofelep1923bell/page/n151/ |access-date=2024-01-11 |quote=Presently King Leopold of Belgium died, and the evacuation of the Lado began. [...] Finding themselves in a country where even murder went unpunished, every man became a law unto himself. Uganda could not touch him, the Sudan had no jurisdiction for six months, and the Belgians had gone. Some of the men went utterly bad and behaved atrociously to the natives, but the majority were too decent to do anything but hunt elephants. [...] The game was shot at, missed, wounded or killed by all sorts of people who had not the rudiments of hunter-craft or rifle shooting. The Belgian posts on the new frontier saw with alarm this invasion of heavily armed safaris [...]}}</ref>

Hippopotami were described as having been "extremely numerous and particularly obtrusive" in the enclave but their presence had dropped to almost zero during the enclave's existence.<ref>Gleichen, p. 80.</ref>

In 1912, renowned naturalist Dr [[Edgar Alexander Mearns]] travelled through the enclave as part of his expedition through eastern Africa searching for new fauna, and reported a new subspecies of [[Temminck's courser]] within the enclave.<ref>"Recent Literature", ''The Auk'', vol. 33, no. 1. (January 1916), American Ornithologists' Union. p. 89.</ref>