Fresh wanderings, Dyoor remedy for wounds. Crocodiles in the
Ghetty. Former residence of Miss Tinné. Dirt and disorder. The
Baggara-Rizegat. An enraged fanatic. The Pongo. Frontiers of the
Bongo and Golo. A buffalo-calf shot. Idrees Wod Defter’s Seriba.
Golo dialect. Corn magazines of the Golo. The Kooroo. The goats’
brook. Increasing level of land. Seebehr’s Seriba Dehm Nduggoo.
Discontent of the Turks. Visit to an invalid. Ibrahim Effendi.
Establishment of the Dehms. Nubians rivals to the slave-dealers.
Population of Dar Ferteet. The Kredy. Overland route to
Kordofan. Shekka. Copper mines of Darfoor. Raw copper.
The third New Year’s Day that I passed on African soil now dawned,
and it was precisely on the 1st of January, 1871, that I found myself
starting off upon my long-projected tour to the west. I left my little
Tikkitikki to the temporary guardianship of Khalil, and set out
accompanied by two of my servants, the negro lads, and the few bearers
that were necessary to carry the little remnant of my property.
My scheme was first of all to pay a visit to Bizelly’s Seriba,
thirty-two miles to the north-west, the same that had been Miss Tinné’s
headquarters seven years previously; and as the controller happened to
be passing through Kurshook Ali’s Seriba on his return from a business
tour, I was glad to avail myself of the chance of travelling in company
with one who was well acquainted with the country. The name of this
man was Bakhit Yussuf; he was a negro by birth, and had formerly been
in the service of Kleincznick, a Hungarian, who at the time of Miss
Tinné’s expedition had owned a Seriba in the Kozanga mountains, and who
by the shameless way in which he had prosecuted the slave-trade, had
fallen under the censure of the Khartoom authorities.
We crossed the Wow at the same wooded spot as we had done in April
1869. This river, the Nyenahm of the Dyoor, the Herey of the Bongo,
during the rainy season has a depth of fourteen to sixteen feet
without ever overflowing its banks; even at this date the bed of the
noble forest-stream was still quite covered with water, the depth of
which near the banks was three or four feet, decreasing in the middle
of the current to less than two feet. The varying depth, however,
did not affect the velocity, which was uniform throughout and about
ninety-eight feet a minute. The width of the Wow I found by careful
measurement to be 132 feet.
[Sidenote: AN UNCOURTEOUS VOKEEL.]
Beyond the river we passed through cultivated lands, leaving Agahd’s
chief Seriba on our left; we then crossed a low range of hills
stretching towards the north-east, and brought our day’s march to an
end in the hamlet of a Dyoor chief named Dimmoh, where we encamped for
the night. I had purposely avoided entering the Seriba Wow, although
it was quite within reach, my reason being that I had recently been
aggrieved by the behaviour of the acting Vokeel, one of the few men of
Turkish origin who had settled in the land. A short time previously
I had despatched a document of considerable importance to myself,
containing a narrative of my late misfortunes, directing it to the
commander of the Egyptian camp, so that through him it might be put
on the right track for Europe, _viâ_ Kordofan; but although the
controllers of all the other Seribas had readily passed on my despatch
from place to place by means of special messengers, this Turkish Vokeel
had sent it back to me with the paltry excuse that he had received
no instructions from myself personally as to where he should forward
it. I was thus compelled to be the bearer of my own papers as far as
the Egyptian camp in Seebehr’s Seriba, whence I hoped to be able to
send them on by one of the slave caravans that made the place their
starting-point.
Our night-camp afforded me an opportunity of renewing my familiarity
with the idyllic village life of the Dyoor. The sorghum harvest had
long been gathered in, and the dokhn had been safely stored in the
great urn-like bins that were so essential a fixture in every hut; a
second crop was now in course of being housed, consisting of the kindy
(_Hyptis_) that springs up between the stubble, many of the women
being engaged in the task, which is very tedious, of cleansing the
poppy-like seeds. About the fields were lying many of those strange
cylinder-shaped melons, which appear to be peculiar to the Dyoor,
with their rind like that of the bottle-gourd and as hard as wood.
There were also large numbers of the fleshy variegated calyces of the
Sabdariffa dried all ready for storing, a condition in which they
retain their pungency, and serve the purpose of giving the soups of the
natives an acid flavour almost as sharp as vinegar.
Several of the old men and women that I saw looked very decrepit; a
circumstance which I mention, because amongst the Bongo, slaves to
heathen superstition as they are, I never noticed a single individual
whose hair was grey.
I was a witness here of what struck me as a very singular method of
treating wounds. A boy’s knee had been grazed, and I saw a woman apply
some of the acrid juice of the _Modecca abyssinica_. Forskal, who
discovered the plant in Arabia, where it goes by the name of “Aden,”
says that pulverized and taken internally it causes a swelling of
the limbs that does not fail to terminate fatally. The Dyoor woman
scraped the rind off a piece of the stem, and having expressed the
juice from the soft pulp spread it upon a damp leaf; this was laid as a
plaster upon the wound and covered with another leaf. I could not help
regretting that time did not allow me to ascertain the efficiency of
the operation.
The nights were calm and beautifully starlight, so that our rest in the
open air was very enjoyable, and we started off each morning before
sunrise with our energies thoroughly requickened.
[Sidenote: THE HAMLETS OF WOLL.]
After going awhile uphill over some rocky ground we came to a declivity
of nearly a hundred feet; at the bottom of this we had to cross a wide
swampy depression covered with the Terminalia forests that so often
characterise such localities. The holes and hollows, although they
were now completely dry, gave ample testimony as to what must be the
number of the pools that would obstruct the path during the height of
the rainy season. In a short time we reached the hamlets of a Dyoor
chief named Woll, that were scattered about an open plain covered with
cultivated fields; this was the frontier of Bizelly’s territory. A
tree something like an acacia, the _Entada sudanica_, remarkable for
its pods, a foot long and thin as paper, and breaking into numbers of
pieces when ripe, was the chief feature in the bush-forests of the
environs, although it is a tree which is generally rare in the country.
The bearers with whom Khalil had supplied me were here dismissed, their
place being taken by others who had come up at the orders of Bakhit
Yussuf. Woll’s people were very busy collecting their iron-ore and
putting their smelting-furnaces into readiness for use. In the vicinity
of the village there was an iron-mine similar to that near Kurshook
Ali’s Seriba.
Over rocky soil and through tracts of dense bushwood we marched on,
until in front of us we saw a kind of valley-plateau, bare of trees,
apparently shut in on the farther side by an eminence extending towards
the north-east, which is the general direction of the territory of the
Dyoor in this district. Here we entered a little Seriba of Bizelly’s,
known by the name of Kurnuk,[64] where we were well entertained during
the midday hours.
In the afternoon we set off again, and mounted the wooded height
covered with great tracts of the Göll tree (_Prosopis_), which is
noticeable for producing a fruit very like the St. John’s bread. Then
again descending, we came to the dried-up bed of a watercourse that
was closely overhung with bushes. Beyond this were various cultivated
plots, dotted here and there with huts; and we next entered a splendid
forest of lofty Humboldtiæ, which by its extent and denseness reminded
me of our own European woods. Our path was shaded by these noble trees
until we reached the Ghetty, or “Little Wow,” six miles above the spot
where Dr. Steudner lies buried on its bank.
This tributary of the Dyoor was about as large as the Molmul near Aboo
Guroon’s Seriba; its bed was between fifty and sixty feet wide; its
banks were ten feet high. At present it was little more than a narrow
ditch, with no perceptible motion in its waters, but I was told that
lower down it widened out into pools that were always full of water.
But insignificant as the Ghetty looked, it was large enough to be the
resort of crocodiles so daring and voracious that they were the terror
of the neighbourhood, the rapacity of the creatures very probably
arising from a prevalent scarcity of fish. A few weeks previously, when
the stream was full to the top of its banks, a Dyoor boy as he was
swimming across had been snapped at by one of these ravenous Saurians
and had never been seen again. It is surprising in the dry season, into
what tiny pools and puddles the crocodile will make its way, and where,
buried in the miry clay, it will find a sufficiently commodious home.
In comparison with these pools the tanks with which the specimens in
the aquariums of our zoological gardens are provided must be fully if
not superfluously spacious. When kept in confinement the crocodile
makes scarcely any perceptible growth; and from this circumstance of
the slow increase of its bulk the inference seems necessarily to follow
that the creature lives to a great age.
The Ghetty is bordered by bushes nearly identical with those which are
found on the banks of all the streamlets of this land; the _Morelia
senegalensis_, the _Zizygium_, and the _Trichilia retusa_ may be noted
as amongst the most common.
I was told that Bizelly’s head Seriba, known amongst the Bongo as
Doggaya Onduppo, was situated upon the right bank, about eight leagues
to the north-west of the spot where we crossed the stream, which here
forms the boundary between the Wow tribe of the Dyoor and the district
populated by the Bongo. We continued to advance for another league and
a half, going up a densely-wooded acclivity until at length, fairly
tired out with our exertions, we entered, quite late in the evening,
Bizelly’s subsidiary Seriba, called by the Bongo Doggaya-morr.
[Sidenote: PREDECESSORS ON THE SOIL.]
Here, for the first time, I found myself on what my scientific
predecessors had made what to my mind was nothing less than a classic
soil. Here it was that Theodor von Heuglin had resided from the 17th
of April, 1863, to the 4th of January, 1864; here, or at least in
an adjacent village of the Wow tribe, had Dr. Steudner[65] expired;
and close in the vicinity had Miss Tinné passed through a period of
wretchedness which all her wealth was powerless to prevent. Never could
I leave the Seriba without being conscious that every shrub and every
plant was a memorial of those who had been before me, for all were
representatives of that hitherto unknown flora of which Heuglin had
collected the first botanical data, and which Dr. Kotschy has depicted
in his noble work ‘Plantæ Tinnianæ,’ partly from the drawings of Miss
Tinné herself.
Within the Seriba, too, I was constantly reminded of the miserable
condition to which this expedition, so comprehensive in its original
design, had been reduced. The region bore every token of having
an unhealthy climate. The stagnant meadow-waters and foul streams
all around had all the appearance of being veritable and prolific
breeding-places for fever and malaria. A great ruined tenement, now a
mere lodgment for sheep and goats, marked the spot where the remains
of Miss Tinné’s mother, who fell a victim to the pernicious climate,
were temporarily deposited until the opportunity came for them to be
removed to her distant home. A dejected fate indeed, and a miserable
resting-place for one who had been reared amidst the comforts and
luxuries of the highest refinement.
Before leaving Bizelly’s Seriba we received intelligence of the murder
of our old friend Shol, the wealthy Dinka princess, into the details
of whose personal charms and associations I have, in an earlier page,
entered with some minuteness. The natives, it seems, had accused her of
inviting the “Turks” into the country; and as many of the tribes in the
neighbourhood had been exposed to attacks from Kurshook Ali’s troops,
they determined to avenge themselves on Shol, as being a long-standing
ally of the Khartoomers. Knowing that she slept alone in her hut, a
troop of men belonging to the Wady (a tribe settled to the east of the
Meshera) set out by night, and under pretext of having business with
Kurdyook, her husband, knocked at her door. She had no sooner appeared
in answer to their summons than they attacked her with deadly blows;
and setting fire to all the huts drove off nearly all the cattle that
was to be found in the place. This melancholy piece of news, coupled
with the recent defeat of the Khartoomers by the Niam-niam, foreboded
ill for the future prospects of the Seribas; by Shol’s death the
vicinity of the Meshera would lose all its peaceful character, and
there was no longer the possibility of solitary boats being left there
in security during the season of the rains.
[Sidenote: LONGO.]
A lovely march of about six miles to the north-west, through an almost
unbroken and in many places very dense bush-forest, brought us to Ali
Amoory’s[66] chief Seriba, distinguished by the natives by the name of
Longo. The Parkia trees were just beginning to bloom. The wonderful
spectacle that these presented was quite unique; their great trusses
of bright red blossoms, large as the fist and smooth as velvet, made a
display that was truly gorgeous, as they depended from the long stalks
which broke forth from the feathery foliage of the spreading crowns.
Another characteristic of the scenery was the _Boxia salicifolia_, that
appeared in great abundance.
In spite of the constant traffic between the different Seribas there
seemed to be no lack of game; traces of hartebeests were everywhere
visible, whilst the little madoqua antelopes bounded like apparitions
from bush to bush. Guinea-fowls were just as prolific as in the
wildest deserts of the Niam-niam. Heuglin, no inexperienced sportsman,
had certainly here chosen a remunerative ground for his zoological
researches.
Our path was crossed by three watercourses, which were now for the most
part dry. By their confluence these three streams formed an important
tributary of the Dyoor, called the Okuloh, their separate names before
their junction, reckoning from the southernmost, being respectively
the Dangyah, the Matshoo, and the Minnikinyee or “fish-water;” their
uniformly north-eastern direction attested the material fall in the
level of the ground at the boundary between the rocky soil and the
alluvial plains of the Dyoor.
Longo ranked as a first-class establishment. It contained a larger
number of huts than even Ghattas’s Seriba, which it surpassed also
in dirt and disorder. Every hedge was crooked, every hut stood awry,
and the farmsteads were as ruined as though they had for years been
abandoned to the ravages of rats and white ants. Disgusting heaps
of ashes and scraps of food, piles of rotten straw, hundreds of old
baskets and gourd-shells stood as high as one’s head all along the
narrow alleys that parted hut from hut; whilst outside the Seriba,
just at its very entrances, there were masses of mouldy rubbish,
overgrown with the most noxious of fungus, that rose as high as the
houses; at every step there was sure to be an accumulation of some
abominable filthiness or other, such as nowhere else, I should think,
even in the Mohammedan world, could be found in immediate proximity to
human habitations; altogether the place presented such a dismal scene
of dirt, decay, and disorder that it was enough to induce a fit of
nightmare upon every one with the smallest sense of either neatness or
decorum. Truly it was a wonderful specimen of domestic economy which
this horde of undisciplined Nubians had thus elaborated.
The level country for a mile or more round the Seriba was occupied by
the arable lands belonging to the settlement. Longo was one of the
oldest establishments in the country, and the adjacent soil was no less
productive than that around the Seriba of Ghattas. The Bongo villages
were all situated at some distance to the west.
Amoory’s representative agent, Zelim, had formerly been a soldier, one
of the Nizzam, in the Turkish service, and was a native of the wild
district of Baria, in the mountains of Taka; he was now absent from
the Seriba, but had left orders that I should be hospitably entertained
and that everything which his stores could furnish should be placed at
my disposal. A grove of excellent plantains was close at hand, from
which I obtained a bounteous supply of that luscious fruit.
[Sidenote: MUTUAL CURIOSITY.]
All the year round a considerable number of slave traders resided in
the place, and were always attended by those wild sons of the steppes,
the Baggara of the Rizegat, who, with their lean, fly-bitten cattle,
had to camp out as well as they could in the environs of the Seriba.
They had never before set eyes upon a Christian, and full of eager
wonder they flocked together to survey me, keeping, however, at a
distance of several yards from personal contact, probably dreading the
malign influence of the “evil eye” of a Frank. Their curiosity was
still further roused when they saw me drawing pictures of their cattle,
and when I offered them my various sketches for their own inspection
they appeared to lose much of the alarm which they had exhibited. I
rose from my seat, and held up to them one picture after another; the
effect was little short of magical; their uncouth tones seemed to
soften into a murmur of delight, and so effectually had I succeeded
in gaining their confidence that some of them were induced to sit
for their own portraits. All those that I drew had fine light brown
complexions, slim muscular frames, and perfectly regular features; the
expression of the face might fairly be pronounced open and honest, and
exhibited the strong resolution that might be expected of a warlike
nation whose occupations, when not in the battle-field, were in hunting
and cattle-breeding. Their profiles all formed quite a right angle;
their noses failed to be aquiline, but were rounded and well-formed;
the faces of the younger men were good-tempered looking, having a
somewhat effeminate expression, which was still further increased by
the high round forehead. All of them seemed to wear their hair in long
slender braids running in rows along the top of the head and drooping
over the neck behind.
As I was pursuing my occupation, and quietly taking my series of
portraits, watched intently by a hundred spectators, who stood around
with open mouths which revealed an astonished admiration, my attention
was all at once arrested by a commotion which was taking place just
outside the circle of the admirers. An old fanatic from Darfoor was
raving away and denouncing loudly what he pleased to call the iniquity
of my proceedings; he professed that my pursuit was beyond all
endurance, and that he was not going to countenance my presumptuous
practices. I shouted to the old rascal to hold his tongue, to mind
his own business, and be off, and most of the bystanders took up the
same strain, some beginning to taunt and jeer the fellow with such a
volley of satirical laughter that, completely discomfited, he was glad
to skulk off as quickly as he could. I could not resist having a word
of my own, and just as he was retiring I shouted after him, for his
comfort, the native proverb, “Trust to the protection of the Almighty
as to the shade of an acacia, but,” I added, “they had need be better
acacias than those of your miserable land.”
On the 6th of January I resumed my progress. Taking a south-westerly
direction I accomplished a good day’s march of eighteen miles and
reached Damury, Amoory’s subsidiary Seriba on the River Pongo. A rocky
soil covered with bush had predominated for the greater portion of
the distance, the route having been perfectly level and unbroken by
the smallest depression. We had crossed the beds of five brooks which
were nearly dry. Taking them in order they were, the Okilleah, a mere
line of stagnant puddles; the Kulloo,[67] a larger brook overhung with
sizygium-bushes, and containing water as high as one’s knees; the
Horroah, a dry hollow bed; the Daboddoo, with a few pools; and the
Ghendoo, with holes from which the water had either dried up or drained
away. All these, when supplied with water, were tributary to the Pongo,
and flowed towards the north-west.
[Sidenote: A PLANT OF HAPPY OMEN.]
Midday, between the Kulloo and the Horroah, we had come upon a gigantic
fig-tree (_Ficus lutea_), one of those memorials of the past that
are so often seen in Bongoland, marking, as they do, the site of an
earlier native village. The name of the place was Ngukkoo. The enormous
tree had a short stem enveloped in a perfect network of aerial roots,
struck downwards from the branches, whilst at the summit it spread out
into a crown of foliage that under the vertical midday sun formed a
shadow on the ground of which the circumference, as I proved by actual
measurement, was not less than 230 feet.
During the latter portion of the march we had seen a considerable
number of candelabra Euphorbiæ and Calotropis. The appearance of the
Calotropis (called in Arabic “el Usher”) was indicative of a more
northerly type of vegetation, as the plant is characteristic of the
steppes of Nubia, Arabia, and the frontiers of India: this was the
first time I had seen it in the territory of the Seribas; the “el
Usher” had evidently been introduced into this part of the country
by traders from the north, and the solid stems of the plants, which
elsewhere are little more than shrubs, bore ample witness to the
long-established traffic on this commercial highway. The explanation of
the extensive diffusion of this plant may be found in the fact that the
silky down that covers the seeds in their large plump pods is used as a
material for stuffing cushions. In the northern steppes its appearing
in sight is ever hailed by the traveller as a happy omen, as it enjoys
the reputation of always having either a well or a hidden spring of
fresh water in its immediate vicinity.
Damury was situated close to the right-hand bank of the Pongo, as the
Bongo call this affluent of the Bahr-el-Arab. On earlier maps the
river was marked as the Kozanga, but this I found to be merely the
designation of a small mountainous ridge that extended for several
leagues along the left bank of the river to the south-west of the
Seriba. On the 17th of July, 1863, Theodor von Heuglin[68] had visited
the spot for the purpose of selecting a dry and rocky eminence in
the woods where a camp might be erected for the headquarters of Miss
Tinné’s expedition. If this scheme had been carried into practice
the melancholy sacrifice of life that resulted from the unwholesome
atmosphere of Bizelly’s Seriba might happily have been spared; but the
difficulties of properly organising so large a party of travellers were
insuperable, and the project of removal to that healthier resort fell
to the ground.
The transitoriness which seems to be the characteristic of all the
institutions of this land prevented me from ascertaining the exact site
of the dwelling-place of the deceased Bongo chief Kulanda, mentioned by
Heuglin in his account of the visit he made to the place; but from the
comparison of certain points of correspondence, I entertain no doubt
but that my footsteps were then upon the very spot.
In its upper course through the district inhabited by the Sehre, the
Pongo, as already noted, bears the name of the Djee; it flows towards
the north-east, and after leaving the Bongo territory beyond Damury
passes through that of the Dembo, a tribe of Shillook origin related to
the Dyoor: on this account the Khartoomers call it the Bahr-el-Dembo.
The Dembo are under the jurisdiction of Ali Amoory, whose territories
extend far beyond the river to the north-west, and join the country of
the Baggara-el-Homr, his most remote Seribas being on the Gebbel Marra,
in the locality of a negro tribe called the Bambirry, probably also
a branch of the great Shillook family; but it should be stated that,
according to some accounts, these Bambirry are true Zandey Niam-niam
who have immigrated from the south and settled in their present
quarters.
[Sidenote: THE RIVER PONGO.]
The scenery about Damury was extremely like that around Awoory in the
Mittoo country; in fact it altogether reminded me of what I had seen on
my trip to the Rohl, especially as the Pongo exhibits not a few points
of resemblance to that river. Damury is built on rising rocky ground,
thickly covered with wood, and close to the eastern or right-hand bank
of the river. The slopes that enclosed the river-bed were about fifteen
feet in depth, and between them and the actual stream there was, on
either side, a strip of soil subject to inundation during the rainy
season and now broken up with numerous pools and backwaters. At this
date (January 7, 1871) the water was moving sluggishly along between
clay banks, some 10 feet down and 70 feet apart; but the water did
not cover a breadth of more than fifty feet and was nowhere more than
four feet in depth. Its velocity was the same as that of the Wow; but
whilst both the Wow and the Dyoor rolled along, even at this season,
in considerable volume, the Pongo was comparatively empty, and, as I
saw, it must have offered a very striking contrast to its appearance
during the Khareef, when no doubt it could make good its pretensions to
be a river of the second class. On the other side of the Pongo there
was a low tract of steppe, at least 3000 paces wide, which, of course,
represented the territory subject to inundation on the left bank. I
subsequently found that the entire length of the river, from its source
to Damury, could not at the most exceed 200 miles, and thus became able
more completely to realise the very remarkable periodic changes which
occur in the condition of the stream.
In various parts of the depression the vegetation of the open steppe is
replaced by close masses of stephogyne: these form marshy clumps, and
from their general habit very strongly resemble our alder-beds of the
north.
Close to the Seriba a deep chasm, called Gumango, opens out into the
valley of the river; it is one of the landslips, so common in this
region, caused by springs washing away the ferruginous swamp-ore from
below, and an inexperienced traveller might easily be led to mistake it
for the bed of a periodical watercourse of considerable magnitude. It
is thickly overgrown with brambles and creepers. The shrub Tinnea plays
a prominent part in the underwoods all around Damury, and many of the
plants that are found growing on the dry sand of the bed of the Pongo
may be considered as true representatives of the flora of the black
Nile-earth, and prove the hydrographical importance of the stream.
Just above the Seriba the course of the river was due east for a
distance of four miles, and in pursuing our westward journey we marched
along the left bank in the direction contrary to the stream until we
arrived at the spot where it made its bend away from the south. Here
we crossed. The sandy bed was not more than 100 feet wide, a grassy
depression beyond was about 400 paces across. On the borders of this we
came upon some ruined huts projecting above the grass, evidently the
remains of a forsaken Seriba of Bizelly’s, which, had likewise been
called Damury, after the name of the Bongo community that had had their
homes in the district. The Bongo had now withdrawn beyond the right
bank of the river, and thus the Pongo had been left as the boundary
between the populated country and the actual wilderness.[69] With very
slight deviations the remainder of our journey to Seebehr’s great
Seriba was in a direction due west. The ground rose considerably, and
on our left was a tall eminence of gneiss, called Ida, a northern spur
of the Kozanga ridge and (with regard to our present position) about
500 feet high. A deep brook, the Ooruporr, rising somewhere on the
slopes of this Mount Ida, here crossed our path, the line of its banks
being distinctly marked out by some specimens of the wild date-palm. A
little farther on we came to a dry, deep chasm, that formed the bed of
a periodic stream known as the Andimoh, which likewise descended from
the hill of Ida; its banks were marked by crags of gneiss and studded
with bamboos.
[Sidenote: THE KARRA.]
We passed onwards over masses of gneiss almost spherical in form,
overgrown with moss-like clusters of selaginella, and reached the bed
of the brook Karra, lying in its deep hollow. To this little stream
the Nubians gave the name of Khor-el-Ganna, on account of the jungles
of bamboo that enclose its rocky banks, which descend in successive
steps so as to produce a series of cascades. The Bongo reckon the Karra
as the boundary between their country and the country of the Golo; it
is also considered to be the line which separates the domain of the
landowner Ali Amoory from that of Idrees Wod Defter, whose Seriba is
about thirty-five miles from Damury and, as nearly as possible, half
way along our route thence to Seebehr’s chief settlement.
Beyond the Karra the path led over very undulated country; and we had
twice to cross a brook called Ya, which, formed mainly of a series of
deep basins, worked its devious way along a contracted defile. Having
at length mounted a steepish eminence of red rock we appeared to
bring our long ascent to an end, and commencing a gradual descent we
proceeded till we reached the brook Attidoh, beside which we encamped
for the night.
Large herds of buffaloes thronged the chief pools of the swampy bed,
and before it became quite dark I managed to creep within range of a
group of cows with their calves. The only result of my exertions was
that one calf fell dead upon the spot where it was struck, all my
other shots apparently taking no effect. Half the night was spent in
roasting, broiling, and drying the flesh of the young buffalo, and all
my party were in great good humour.
The forests for long distances were composed exclusively of lofty
Humboldtiæ, and increased in magnitude and denseness as we advanced
farther amongst them; they were so fine that they might well bear
comparison with any of the best wooded districts of the Niam-niam. We
crossed a half-dry khor (or stream-channel) called the Ngoory, and
shortly afterwards a marshy brook, with a considerable supply of water,
called the Akumunah; both of these joined the Mongono, of which the bed
at the place where we crossed it was so dry that it appeared only like
a tract of sand, seventy feet wide; but by turning up the loose sand to
the depth of six inches, a copious stream of clear water was discovered
to be running on its subterranean way over a gravelly bottom. In the
rainy season the Mongono assumes quite a river-like appearance, for I
discovered traces of important backwaters that had been left by its
inundation, and the banks that bounded its sandy bed were not much less
than eight feet high.
A little rose-coloured gentian, the Causcora, characterises the slopes
of the banks of this streamlet, growing just in the same luxuriant
manner as the kindred species that adorn the sides of our own brooks.
The frequent appearance of the Abyssinian Protea convinced me that the
elevation of the ground was greater than what we had left behind us:
as matter of fact we were at an average height of 2500 feet above the
level of the sea.
The Yow-Yow, a narrow sort of trench, made up of a series of deep
pools, next intersected our path. On the other side of this I mounted
a crag of gneiss, whence I obtained an extensive view towards the
west, and observed an elevated line of woods stretched out with the
precision of a wall from S.S.W. to N.N.E. The elevation was beyond the
Athena, a brook that we reached after first crossing two other but
minor streams. The bed of the Athena was formed of sand and gravel;
although it was dry, with the exception of some occasional water-pools
that had not failed, it was fifty feet in width. The steepness of the
banks demonstrated that in the rainy season they enclosed what would
be allowed to be a considerable river. Two more brooks with deep beds
had still to be crossed, and then we entered upon the cultivated
land adjacent to Idrees Wod Defter’s Seriba. Two miles more, along a
continuous ascent, brought us to the Seriba itself.
[Sidenote: IDREES WOD DEFTER.]
Idrees Wod Defter was a partner in Agahd’s firm. His Seriba had
been built about three years previously, and was composed of large
farmsteads, shut in almost with the seclusion of monasteries by
tall hedges of straw-work; they were occupied by the various great
slave-traders who had settled in the country. Four huts and a large
rokooba had recently been erected for the accommodation of the numerous
travellers who passed through, chiefly composed of second-class
traders, who, like itinerant Jews, wandered about from place to
place, hawking their goods. Idrees himself resided in his Niam-niam
Seribas, which, I was told, were near Mofio’s residence, seven or
eight days’ journey distant. Besides this chief settlement there were
two subsidiary Seribas, one about four leagues to the south-east,
on the western declivity of the Kozanga hills, and another at the
same distance to the south-west, the controller of which was named
Abd-el-Seed. The farmsteads of the chief Seriba stood in their separate
enclosures, and were not surrounded by the ordinary palisade. Close
by, on the south, a little spring trickling forth from a cleft in the
ground suddenly expanded into a clear rippling brook that ran merrily
to the west.
The natives that served the necessary demands of the Seriba belonged to
the tribe of the Golo. In manners and in general appearance they very
much resemble their eastern neighbours the Bongo, although the dialects
of the two tribes have very little in common. More than any other negro
tongue with which I gained much familiarity, the Golo dialect seems
to abound in sounds resembling the German vowels _ö_ and _ü_, and,
like some of the South African dialects, it contains some peculiar
nasal tones, which may be described as sharp and snapping, and which
are quite unknown to the neighbouring nations. Another peculiarity
consists in the frequent occurrence of certain lingual sounds, which in
a measure may be represented by _ds_ and _ts_.
[Illustration: Golo Woman.]
Escorted by the controller of the Seriba I made an inspection of all
the neighbouring hamlets, and observed that the style of the Golo
architecture was far more like that of the Niam-niam than that of the
Bongo. The roofs of the huts projected far beyond the clay-walls, and
were supported on light posts which formed a colonnade, the walls
themselves being whitewashed with hyæna-dung.
The flora of the bush is distinguished by large numbers of _Euphorbia
venenifica_, which is only sporadically represented in this district,
and a tree of a type which is rare in the southern parts of Darfoor
and Kordofan and in the Western and Central Soudan, the _Eriodendron
anfractuosum_, being in fact the “cotton tree” of the colonist, was
planted near the Seribas for its ornamental qualities. It is called
“ruhm” by the Foorians, and is chiefly remarkable for the verticillate
arrangement of its branches, separating the crown of the tree into
divisions distinct from each other, like an araucaria—a peculiarity
that results in its being resorted to by the poor heathen negroes of
Baghirmy, when they are on the look-out for a place of refuge from the
bands of slave-hunters: large conical prickles of an immense thickness
cover the stem, almost like the clusters of barnacles on a log of wood
that has been exposed to the influence of the sea.
[Sidenote: MEETING AN OLD FRIEND.]
Just as I was on the point of leaving the Seriba of Idrees Wod Defter,
my old friend Mohammed Aboo Sammat arrived. He came in the train of a
large party of Bongo who were conveying corn to the place, and as, like
myself, he was on his way to the Egyptian camp, we joined company and
started without further delay to the west.
Half a league beyond the Seriba we left the cultivated land and
re-entered the forest wilderness near the village of the Golo chief
Kaza. Far and wide the fields were sown with sweet potatoes, and dokhn
corn was extensively cultivated. In the village of Kaza we noticed
several of the peculiar corn-magazines upon the construction of which
the Golo spend so much care. They are at once bold and graceful in
design. The actual receptacle for the corn is made of clay and is in
the form of a goblet; it is covered with a conical roof of straw, which
serves as a movable lid; to protect it from the ravages of rats it is
mounted on a short substantial pedestal, that is supported at the base
by stakes arranged as a series of flying buttresses. Altogether the
structure is very symmetrical; and the clay is worked into tasteful
graduated mouldings that add considerably to the general finish of the
whole. The dwelling huts of the Golo also display peculiarities in
their style of building, and bear evident marks of being erected with
unusual care and labour.
[Illustration: Corn-magazine of the Golo.]
The Seriba we had just quitted was situated on the watershed between
the Kooroo and the Pongo. We crossed the last stream in the Pongo
system just beyond Kaza’s hamlets; it was called the Abbuloh, and
was now thirty-five feet wide and two feet deep. Farther on the path
gradually rose through a shady wood until we reached an eminence strewn
over with blocks of gneiss; then descending, still through woods, we
came to a copious brook of about the same dimension as the Abbuloh.
This was the Bombatta, which flowed in a north-western direction and
joined the Kooroo. The next brook, the Abeela, moved in the same
direction, and was composed of a connected series of deep basins. Two
more rivulets of the same character followed, the second of which,
named the Ngoddoo, flowed past a flat bare elevation of gneiss and
joined the Kooroo only a short distance to the west. Amongst the autumn
flora of this region the Hydralia was very conspicuous, its brilliant
sky-blue blossoms blending with the grass so as to form a charming
carpet over the depressions of the brooks.
[Sidenote: THE BAHR-EL-KOOROO.]
An hour after crossing the Ngoddoo we arrived at the bank of the
Bahr-el-Kooroo, as this important affluent of the Bahr-el-Arab is
called by the Mohammedan settlers; the name is probably borrowed from
the Baggara Arabs, as amongst the Golo (whose territory it divides from
that of the Kredy on the west) it is sometimes called the Mony, and
sometimes the Worry; by the Sehre it is called the Wee. At the place
of our transit it was flowing towards the N.N.W., and the current was
rather rapid. The entire breadth of the bed was between ninety and
a hundred feet, but of this only sixty feet was covered with water,
the depth of which nowhere exceeded two feet. At one spot the river
flowed over blocks and layers of gneiss that were overgrown with mossy
Tristichæ. The banks stood fifteen feet high, and although there
were woods on either side that grew right down to the water, many
indications remained of their being subject to a periodical inundation:
a canoe left high up on the dry ground was an evidence how full of
water the river must be during the rainy season.
We kept continually meeting small companies of slave traders, mounted
on oxen or on donkeys and having their living merchandise in their
train.
The long tracts of one species of forest-tree reminded me very much of
the masses of the alder-like Vatica on the Tondy. Beyond the west bank
of the river the path led up the steep side of a valley, and the level
of the soil rapidly increased. Then we came to a series of ruts like
deep ditches, some quite dry and some still filled with running water.
We counted six of these before reaching the Beesh, or Khor-el-Rennem,
which is an affluent of the Beery and the largest of the three
tributaries of the Babr-el-Arab, which I had the opportunity of seeing.
The Khor-el-Rennem, or goats’ brook, received its name from the
circumstance that once, during the period of the annual rains, a whole
herd of goats had made an attempt to cross the stream and had all been
drowned in the rushing flood. It was shut in by trees and bushes of
many kinds, and these cast a gloomy shade over the chasm which was worn
by the waters; it was now only a foot deep and fifteen feet wide.
Here, again, the land on the western shore rose suddenly like a wall,
a peculiarity in the topography of the country that testified to the
continual increase of its level above the sea.
Two easy leagues forward, generally over cultivated country and past
several hamlets belonging to the Kredy tribe, the Nduggo, and I reached
what I designed should be my resting-place for awhile at Seebehr’s
Seriba, which was also the Egyptian camp. The distance of seventy
miles from the Pongo had been accomplished in four days. By this time
I had become quite accustomed to the habit of counting my steps. I had
become my own “perambulator,” and could not help thinking, as I marched
along, of Xenophon and his _parasangs_ in the expedition of the Greeks.
One day of our ordinary marching would accomplish about four or five
parasangs.
[Sidenote: SEEBEHR’S SERIBA.]
Seebehr’s Seriba was 2282 feet above the level of the sea, 464 feet
higher than Bizelly’s Seriba on the Ghetty, and 737 feet higher than
Ghattas’s chief settlement. There was but little observable change in
the character of the vegetation; few new plants appeared, and almost
the only difference was that the forests had apparently become more
dense. But however little the gradual elevation of the land might
affect the vegetation, yet the hydrographical condition of the country
very plainly attested a complete alteration in the nature of the soil.
Although our present latitude was 8° N., the general aspect that came
under the observation of a traveller was almost identical with what he
would see between latitude 6° and latitude 5° in passing southwards
from Bongoland to the Niam-niam.
Immediately after crossing the Pongo we quitted the soft absorbent
soil, and entered upon a region so prolific in springs that, all the
year round, every rivulet, brook, and trench, and even the smallest
fissure in the earth, is full of water, and that of the brightest and
purest quality. Between the Pongo and Seebehr’s Seriba we had crossed
no less than twenty brooks and two rivers of considerable magnitude.
Just as had been the case in the Niam-niam lands, water trickled
from every crevice and found an outlet on every slope, whilst in the
low-lying country of the Dyoor and Bongo, on the edge of the red
swamp-ore, where chasms and watercourses are quite as abundant, no
springs ever break forth during the winter months, and the half-dry
beds are supplied by no other water than what has been left from the
previous Khareef.
This circumstance seems in a certain degree to illustrate the
conformation of the south-western side of the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin; for
the general direction of all the streams that contribute to its volume
would be at right angles to the lines of the terraces that rise one
above the other at various levels above the sea.
The Seriba was enclosed by a palisade 200 feet square; hundreds of
farmsteads and groups of huts were scattered round, extending far away
along the eastern slope of a deep depression which was traversed in
the direction of the north-west by a brook that was fed by numerous
springs. The whole place, in all its leading features, had the aspect
of a town in the Soudan, and vividly reminded me of Matamma, the great
market town in Gallabat, where all the inland trade with Abyssinia is
transacted. To establishments of this magnitude the natives give the
name of “Dehm,”[70] which is, in fact, an equivalent for “a town.”
The heights to the east of the place were more important than those
immediately bordering on the depression, and in the N.N.E. very high
ground was visible in the distance. Towards the west the country sloped
downwards for a couple of leagues to the river Beery, which, it has
been mentioned, is an important tributary of the Bahr-el-Arab.
The Egyptian troops were encamped at the southern extremity of the
settlement, and were under the command of the Vokeel-el-urda, Ahmed
Aga, who had been the lieutenant of the late Sandjak. The black
swindler, Hellali, was still kept in confinement, his company of
soldiers being treated as prisoners of war and placed under the
surveillance of the other troops in a section of the camp allotted to
the purpose. Great scarcity of provisions prevailed, for, in addition
to the troops, the population had been augmented by the arrival
of many hundreds of slave-dealers from Kordofan. Immediately on
receiving information of the schemes that were being plotted against
his copper-mines by the Egyptian Government, Husseïn, the Sultan of
Darfoor, had prohibited all intercourse between his own frontiers and
the Seribas of the Khartoomers; consequently the traders from Aboo
Harras, in Kordofan, found themselves obliged to take a longer and
more dangerous route across the steppes of the predatory Baggara; but,
in spite of every difficulty, the presence of the Government troops
offered such an attraction that the number of the traders was just
doubled. They were enticed by the hope of carrying on a lucrative
business with the avaricious Turkish soldiers, whose influential
position gave them opportunities that were specially advantageous for
making high profits; but besides this, the attempt, however abortive,
of the Government authorities in Khartoom to suppress the slave-trade
along the Nile had had the effect of driving up the traffic in the
upper countries to such a premium that the dealers were spurred on
to fresh energy. Since the last rainy season upwards of 2000 small
slavedealers had arrived at the Seriba, and others were still
expected.[71] All these people, like the troops, lived upon Seebehr’s
corn-stores, and thus provisions became so scarce that they could
hardly be purchased for their own weight in copper, which, with the
exception of slaves, was the solitary medium of exchange.
[Sidenote: EGYPTIAN TROOPS.]
It might not unnaturally have been expected that the Egyptian troops
would have taken up their position in the richest and most prolific of
the corn-lands; but instead of this they had quartered themselves on
the extreme limit of the Seribas in the Bahr-el-Ghazal district. The
avowed reason for this was that they might be better able to overlook
the approaches to the copper-mines of Darfoor, but the real motive was
in order that they might be nearer the fountain-head of the slave-trade
and in direct communication with the northern territories, from which
the main supply of living merchandise was obtained. I have already
drawn attention to the impossibility of raising the contributions of
corn required by the Egyptian commander, and I now became a personal
witness of the unreasonableness of his demands; he appeared to have
no other object than to exhaust the land already impoverished by the
slave-trade, and in true Turkish fashion he set to work to involve all
that remained in utter ruin.
In point of fact, however, it must be owned that it was a matter of
considerable difficulty (after the bloody conflict that had resulted
from Hellali’s compulsory levies) for Ahmed Aga to raise the necessary
supplies for the coming Khareef; but he made his requisitions in the
most unfair way; his partiality was extreme, for while he exempted some
Seribas from any contribution at all, he imposed upon others a demand
for a double supply. My friend Mohammed was one of the oppressed. He
had been called upon to furnish fifty ardebs of corn, a quantity
corresponding to the burdens of 150 to 170 bearers, and not only was
his Seriba at Sabby at a distance of seventeen days’ journey from this
spot, but his corn-magazines were still another four days’ journey
farther on, so that the mere maintenance of the bearers for three weeks
would take thirty ardebs more. Mohammed, in truth, had not sufficient
corn of his own to meet the demand of the Divan, and would be reduced
to the necessity, in order to make up what was deficient, of purchasing
at famine prices from other Seribas which already were well-nigh
exhausted.
I took upon myself to intercede with the Aga, but to no purpose; he
was utterly inflexible, and, not content with insisting upon his
original demand, inflicted a heavy fine for the delay in the payment
of the tribute, by exacting a contribution of 100 ardebs instead of
fifty. But what irritated me more than anything else was the barefaced
iniquity with which he backed up Shereefee in his refusal to make any
compensation to Mohammed for the outrage, no better than a highway
robbery, which he had perpetrated upon him, whilst at the same time he
pretended to upbraid Mohammed for what he called his implacability. The
solution of the matter was very easy. Shereefee had bribed Ahmed Aga
with a lavish present of slaves, and that was a gift as acceptable as
cash, just because they were a recognised medium of currency.
Notwithstanding the crowd of human beings thus aggregated together,
the bill of health, as far as it was influenced by the climate, was
perfectly satisfactory. There were, of course, occasional cases of
hereditary or insidious disease; but even amongst the slaves, closely
packed as they were, the mortality was inconsiderable, and the human
bones that lay scattered about were comparatively fewer than what
I had grown accustomed to notice in other places. The effeminate
Turkish soldiers, however, grumbled excessively at their position;
they besieged me with petitions that I would not only represent their
misery to the Governor-General in the strongest terms, but that I would
do my utmost to convince the authorities that neither profit nor glory
could be gained from an enterprise which was exposing their lives to so
much peril. “Do this,” they said, “and you will be doing us one of the
greatest favours that it is in the power of mortal man to confer, and
the blessing of Allah be with you!”
[Sidenote: TURKS IN CENTRAL AFRICA.]
Certain it is that these Turks, fit for nothing better than to lounge
about on a divan, were the most unsuitable beings imaginable ever to
have been sent on an expedition into the wilds of Central Africa. A
year of their ordeal had scarcely passed, and already their complaints
were piteous enough to melt a heart of stone; they seemed helpless
as babes, and I verily believe that had it not been for the Nubians
they would have been cheated and trampled on and reduced to the direst
necessities in this land of solitude and starvation. They were all
indifferent walkers; they could not endure the food of the country;
they sorely missed their “schnaps;” they were aggrieved at the loss of
their wheat-flour and their rice, and did not understand going without
their habitual luxuries. It was indeed a kind of set-off against all
this that they could be as indolent as they pleased. There was nothing
to do, and nothing they did; they did not plant out a single plot of
maize, they did not lay out a kitchen-garden of the simplest kind; but,
loitering about from morning till night, they kept up their unfailing
growls of discontent, dealing out their invectives against the
“wretched” land and its “wretched” people. No wonder they complained of
_ennui_. Divest a Turk of his fine clothes, his formal etiquette, his
measured speech, and his little bit of honour which may be described as
“l’extérieur de la vertu et l’élégance des vices,” and little remains
to elevate him above a Nubian of the worst class; nevertheless, the
mutual antipathy that existed between the Turks and the Nubians was
very marked, and verified the proverb that “Arabs’ blood and Turks’
blood will never boil together.”
The remarkably large contingent of Gellahbas that chanced to be within
the place gave the dirty crowds of men, such as are more or less
to be invariably found in every Seriba, a more motley aspect than
usual, and altogether the Dehm offered a deplorable contrast to the
freshness of the wilderness that we had so long and so recently been
traversing. The hawkers of living human flesh and blood, unwashed
and ragged, squatted in the open places keeping their eye upon their
plunder, eager as vultures in the desert around the carcase of a camel.
Their harsh voices as they shouted out their blasphemous prayers; the
drunken indolence and torpor of the loafing Turks; the idle, vicious
crowds of men infested with loathsome scabs and syphilitic sores; the
reeking filthy exhalations that rose from every quarter—all combined
to make the place supremely disgusting. Turn where I would, it was ever
the same; there was the recurrence of sights, sounds, and smells so
revolting that they could not do otherwise than fill the senses with
the most sickening abhorrence.
Such were my impressions as I made my entry into the Dehm Nduggo,
as the settlement is called from the Kredy tribe with which the
neighbourhood is populated. The first consideration I had to make for
myself was whether I would become the guest of the Turks or of the
Nubians; I had to choose whether I would sue for hospitality at the
hands of Seebehr or of the Turkish Aga. After due deliberation I made
up my mind to apply to Seebehr, for as the Turks had taken the smaller
share in the affair with Hellali, I concluded that they constituted the
less powerful element, and, in truth, they were themselves dependent
upon Seebehr’s liberality. But what perhaps influenced me still more
was that my firman from the Government had been lost in the fire, and
that consequently I was lacking in credentials to make any formal and
authoritative demands; and I did not wish to be at the mercy of the
commander. As it was, Ahmed Aga did not even fulfil the stipulations
that had been made in my favour by the Government in Khartoom, and
all that I could get out of him was a supply of good writing-paper to
enable me to go on with my sketching.
Amongst the effects of Kurshook Ali, on which I had set my hopes,
I could discover nothing that would be of the least service to me;
his successor had long since, in true Ottoman fashion, disposed
of everything that could be turned to account, a proceeding that
subsequently involved him in a lawsuit with the son of the deceased
Sandjak.
[Sidenote: SEEBEHR’S COURT.]
Meanwhile I was most kindly received by Seebehr, and as long as I
remained in the Seriba I had not the faintest cause of complaint. He
was himself in a debilitated state of health; the wound that he had
received in the late fray had proved very dangerous, the bullet having
completely penetrated the ankle-bone. The only means employed for
healing the wound was repeated syringing with pure olive-oil, a remedy
which, though slow, had been efficacious; for when I saw him, after
some weeks had elapsed since the casualty, the injury was all but cured.
Seebehr[72] had surrounded himself with a court that was little less
than princely in its details. A group of large well-built square huts,
enclosed by tall hedges, composed the private residence; within these
were various state apartments, before which armed sentries kept guard
by day and night. Special rooms, provided with carpeted divans, were
reserved as ante-chambers, and into these all visitors were conducted
by richly-dressed slaves, who served them with coffee, sherbet, and
tchibouks. The regal aspect of these halls of state was increased
by the introduction of some lions, secured, as may be supposed, by
sufficiently strong and massive chains. Behind a large curtain in the
innermost hut was placed the invalid couch of Seebehr. Attendants were
close at hand to attend to his wants, and a company of Fakis sat on
the divan outside the curtain and murmured their never-ending prayers.
In spite of his weakness and his suffering he was ever receiving a
stream of visitors, who had something to say to “the Sheikh,” as he
was commonly called. I often paid him a visit, and, to my surprise
at first, was accommodated with a chair by the side of his bed. He
repeatedly bewailed the helplessness of his condition, saying how vexed
he was at being unable personally to provide for my requirements,
adding that if he had been well, he should have had the greatest
pleasure in escorting me over his lands. It was a great relief to my
mind that he did not apply to me for surgical advice. I was glad to
encourage him by my approbation of the remedy he was using, which, if
it possessed no particular virtue, had at least the recommendation of
being perfectly harmless.
A draft that I made on my account at Khartoom was duly honoured,
and I obtained a hundredweight of copper from Seebehr’s stores;
this I employed without delay as cash, and purchased soap, coffee,
and a variety of small articles from the hawking hangers-on of the
slave-traders, as well as a large supply of cartridge-paper for the
preservation of my botanical specimens.
The greatest service, however, that Seebehr afforded me was in
providing me with boots and shoes of European make; no acquisition was
to be appreciated higher than this; and in finding myself fresh and
well-shod I felt myself renovated to start again upon my wanderings
with redoubled vigour. None but those who have been in my condition
can comprehend the pleasure with which I hailed the sight of the most
trivial and ordinary articles. Once again I was in possession of a
comb, some pipe-bowls, and lucifers. As I was not in the least inclined
to forego my smoking while on the march, I had been obliged, in order
to get a light for my tobacco, to make one of my people carry a blazing
firebrand throughout the recent journey.
[Sidenote: IBRAHIM EFFENDI.]
No sooner was I installed in the huts allotted to me than I received
a succession of visitors; some of them crossed my threshold from
mere idle curiosity, whilst others came either with some vague hope
of profit or from some innate love of intrigue. I was honoured by a
call from the great Zelim, Ali Aboo Amoory’s chief controller, who
came to express his hope that I had been satisfied with my reception
in his Seriba, which I had visited during his absence. Then I made
the acquaintance of some of the more important slave-traders, who had
long been settled in the place and who came burning with curiosity
to know the real object of my journey. But the most remarkable of
all my visitors was a certain Ibrahim Effendi, who held the office
of head clerk and accountant in the Egyptian camp. His life had been
one unbroken series of criminal proceedings, and he had been guilty
of frauds and swindling transactions to an extent that was absolutely
incredible. Originally a subordinate in one of the departments of the
Egyptian Ministry he had, during Said Pasha’s Government, forged the
Viceregal seal and attached it to a document professing to appoint him
to the command of a regiment that was to be formed in Upper Egypt, and
to prescribe that the local government there should defray all the
expenses of levying and equipping the troops. This document he had the
audacity to present first with his own hands to the governor of the
province, and then forthwith he proceeded to present himself in the
Upper Egyptian town as the colonel of the new regiment. Only those
who are acquainted with the disorder and despotism that prevailed in
every branch of the Administration during the lifetime of that Viceroy
could believe that such a deception would be practicable; but I am
in a position positively to assert that the fraudulent artifice did
really for a while succeed. Two months afterwards, the troops having
meanwhile been embodied, the Viceroy happened to make an excursion up
the Nile, and seeing a great many soldiers on its banks, inquired the
number of their regiment and why they were there. His astonishment was
unbounded when he was told of a regiment of whose existence he had
never previously heard. Ibrahim was summoned at once. Throwing himself
at the Viceroy’s feet, the culprit colonel confessed his guilt and
begged for mercy. The good-natured Said, who never suffered himself
to lose his temper, far less to go into a rage, merely sentenced him
to a few years’ banishment and imprisonment in Khartoom. As soon as
Effendi had completed his term of punishment and regained his liberty,
he started afresh as clerk to some of the Soudan authorities; but his
habits of fraud and embezzlement were as strong as ever, and he was
caught in the act of decamping with the cash-box, and was this time
banished to Fashoda, on the White Nile, as being the safest place for
dangerous characters of his stamp. After he had been here for several
years our friend managed to excite the compassion of Kurshook Ali, who
was passing through the place, and was induced to give him his present
post of head clerk to his division of the Government troops. This
appointment brought Effendi to the district of the Gazelle.
Well versed as he was in the ways of the world, Effendi, by his wit
and versatility, seemed to have the power of winning every heart. His
position here in the Egyptian camp offered only too wide a scope for
his love of intrigue. He had played an important part in the affair
with Hellali, having doubtless been at the bottom of the stroke of
policy that had reconciled Seebehr to the Turkish soldiers by bringing
the hated Hellali to chains and to the yoke of the sheba. Probably he
was again bidding for the command of come troops, and I am bound to
confess that he seemed in a fair way of being able before long to
gratify his old predilection for military organisation.
[Sidenote: DAR FERTEET.]
The uninhabited wilderness stretching to the west of the Pongo, a
district long known to the inhabitants of Darfoor and Kordofan under
the name of Dar Ferteet,[73] represents one of the oldest domains
of the slave-trade, and at the present day, as far as regards its
aboriginal population, presents to the eye of a traveller the aspect
of what may be described as “a sold-out land.” Only within the last
fifteen years have the Khartoom trading-companies penetrated into
the district watered by the Gazelle, but long before that numbers of
slave-dealers had already formed settlements in Dar Ferteet, then as
now streaming into the country from Darfoor and Kordofan accompanied
by hundreds of armed men, and coming, year after year, in the winter
months so as to accomplish their business and get back to their homes
before the rainy season again set in. Some of them, however, did not
return, but remained permanently in the land, and, under the sanction
of the more influential chieftains, founded large establishments
(Dehms) to serve as marts or _depôts_ for their black merchandise.
As soon as the ivory-traders, with their enormous armed bands, made
their appearance in the country, the Gellahbas received them with
open arms; and the Nubians, in order to provide for the storing of
their ivory and ammunition, forthwith combined their Seribas with the
Dehms already established, so that in the course of time these places
assumed the appearance of the market towns of the Soudan. The Gellahbas
by remaining in their old quarters reaped a twofold advantage: in
the first place, the large contingents of armed men that were now
introduced into the country relieved them from the necessity of
maintaining troops of their own; and, secondly, they were exonerated
from the heavy imposts that they had been compelled to pay to the
native Kredy chieftains, as these were very speedily reduced by the
Nubians to the subordinate position of mere sheikhs or local overseers
of the natives. In the course of my tour through Dar Ferteet I became
acquainted with five of these towns, which represented so many centres
of the slave-trade in this part of the country.
But although the various Khartoom companies who had thus taken up their
quarters in the Dehms sent out expeditions every year to the remotest
of the Kredy tribes in the west, and even penetrated beyond them to the
Niam-niam in the south-west, it did not take them very long to discover
that the annual produce of ivory was altogether inadequate to defray
the expenses of equipping and maintaining their armed force. Finding,
however, that the region offered every facility for the sale of slaves,
they began gradually to introduce this unrighteous traffic into their
commercial dealings, until at length it became, if not absolutely the
prime, certainly one of the leading objects of their expeditions;
thus the people whom the professional Gellahbas had at first hailed
as friends grew up, ere long, to be their most formidable rivals. For
example, Seebehr Rahama himself, who had to maintain a fighting force
of a thousand men on his territories, had, as the result of his ivory
expedition in the previous year, gained no more than 300 loads or 120
cwt., a quantity which realised but little over 2300_l._ at Khartoom;
but at the same time he sent probably as many as 1800 slaves direct to
Kordofan, there to be disposed of on his own account.
Ethnographically considered, Dar Ferteet presented a wondrous medley.
Perhaps nowhere else, in an area so limited, could there be found such
a conglomeration of the representatives of different races as upon the
cultivated tracts in the environs of the Dehms: they were evidently
the miserable remnants of an unceasing work of destruction. As we
have already observed, the neighbours of the Bongo upon the west were
the Golo and the Sehre, who combine together and have their homes in
common. Beyond them, still farther to the west, are the Kredy. These
Kredy do not seem to be limited to any particular district, but like
blades of any one particular species of grass, crop up every now and
then, quite at haphazard, as it were, amongst the other species in
detached groups. The tribes which predominate, or at any rate those
which I had the most frequent opportunities of observing, were the
Nduggo, who were settled around Seebehr’s Dehm; the Bia, who were
settled all about Dehm Gudyoo; and the Yongbongo, who occupied the
region between the two.
[Sidenote: THE KREDY.]
Of all the people of the Bahr-el-Ghazal district with whom I made
acquaintance, the Kredy, I think, were the ugliest; and whether it
was in consequence of their longer period of subjection, or that they
were depressed by their straitened circumstances, I cannot say, but
certainly they were, to my mind, very inferior in intelligence to
the Golo, the Sehre, and the Bongo. In form the Kredy are thick and
unwieldy, and entirely wanting in that symmetry of limb which we admire
in the slim figures of those who inhabit the swampy depressions of the
Gazelle; but although their limbs are strong and compact, they must
not be supposed to be like the muscular and well-developed limbs of
Europeans. They are like the true Niam-niam in being below an average
height, and resemble them more particularly in the broad brachycephalic
form of their skulls; there is, however, a very marked difference
between the two races in the growth of the hair and in the shape of the
eyes. Their lips are thicker and more protruding and their mouths wider
than those of any other negroes that I saw throughout the whole of my
travels. Their upper incisor teeth were either filed to a point or cut
away, so as to leave intervening gaps between tooth and tooth; in the
lower jaw there is no mutilation, and the teeth being left intact may
perhaps account for their language being more articulate than any other
in this part of Africa, although, at the same time, it bears but the
slightest resemblance to any of them. Their complexion is coppery-red,
the same hue that is to be noticed among the fairer individuals of the
Bongo; but, like the majority of the Niam-niam, they are generally
coated with such encrusted layers of dirt that they appear several
shades darker than they really are: as a rule I should say that they
are decidedly fairer than either the Bongo or the Niam-niam.
The Kredy are bounded on the north by the Baggara-el-Homr; on the
north-west, three and a half days’ journey from Dehm Nduggo, reside the
tribe of the Manga, who are said to be quite distinct from the Kredy;
on the west, five or six days’ journey from Dehm Gudyoo, on the Upper
Bahr-el-Arab, are the abodes of the Benda, whose land has long been
known to the Foorians under the name of Dar Benda, and used to be the
limit of their venturesome slave-raids; still farther to the west are
the settlements of the Aboo Dinga, who are said to have no affinity
either with Kredy or Niam-niam. The most important of the western Kredy
tribes are the Adya, Bia, and Mareh, and towards the south-west their
territory is approximate to the frontier wildernesses of Mofio, the
Niam-niam king. Finally, in the south, there is a mingled population of
Golo and Sehre, the Sehre decidedly very much predominating in numbers.
[Sidenote: A PROJECT ABANDONED.]
Before I had learnt the true state of things with respect to the
caravan-roads that started from Dehm Nduggo, I had indulged the hope
of making my homeward journey by the overland route through Kordofan:
the prospect of extending my geographical knowledge by traversing
unknown lands was very attractive and almost irresistible, but when the
difficulties and drawbacks came to be reckoned up, I was compelled,
however reluctantly, to relinquish a project so perilous as marching
across the steppes of the Baggara, and to reconcile myself to retrace
my course by the more secure and habitual highway of the Nile. I
could willingly have borne the exposure to fatigue, and it might be
to hunger; I could have risked the peril of being attacked, and could
have stood my chance of procuring the necessary provisions and means of
transport; but the extreme uncertainty as to the length of time which
the slave-dealers’ caravans would take upon their northward return was
of itself sufficient to deter me from my scheme; I ascertained that,
whenever it suited their interest, they would linger for weeks and
weeks together at various places on their way, and delays such as this
were altogether inconsistent with my present purpose and convenience.
In the meantime I found a very desirable opportunity of forwarding my
long-written letters to Khartoom: the Turkish commander was about to
remit his own despatches by a caravan, and he undertook to enclose my
correspondence with his own. As a security against any injury that
might happen to the mail-bag from the caravan being attacked by the
marauding soldiers of the Sultan Husseïn, Ahmed Aga had provided an
ordinary Arab travelling chest with a double bottom as a hiding-place
for all the papers. The chest was confided to a trustworthy Faki, who
happily reached the Egyptian frontier without molestation.
Taking seven leagues as an average day’s march, the journey from
Dehm Nduggo to Aboo Harras on the southern frontier of Kordofan is
estimated to take thirty days. This statement was confirmed by various
independent testimonies, and I found moreover that it corresponded
with the distance of the two places as indicated by my map, a distance
which, according to the position that I assigned to Dehm Nduggo,
would be a trifle under 380 miles. The route first of all leads in
a N.N.E. direction to Seebehr’s most northerly Seriba, Serraggo, a
distance which it takes three days to accomplish. Another day’s march
and the traveller reaches Dalgowna, a depôt much frequented by the
slave-dealers and situated on the isolated mountain of the same name
as itself, from which there is said to be an extensive view across the
northern steppes. The Beery flows quite close to this Gebel Dalgowna,
on its way to join the Bahr-el-Arab farther to the north-east. Three
days’ journey more and the Bahr-el-Arab is attained, just at a spot
were it marks off the frontiers of the Baggara-el-Homr. On account
of the so-called Bedouins (known as “Arabs” in the common parlance
of the Soudan) residing upon its banks, the river has received, from
the traders of Kordofan and Darfoor, the designations both of the
Bahr-el-Arab and the Bahr-el-Homr: that these two appellations belong
to different rivers is quite a fallacy, and the mistake, which has
found its way into many maps, very probably originated in travellers
sometimes calling the river by one name and sometimes by the other.
There is really but the _one_ river. After another three days’ march
Shekka is reached, the great rendezvous in the territory of the
Baggara-Rizegat. It may thus be seen that the journey from Dehm Nduggo
to Shekka may be accomplished in ten or twelve days, according to the
length of the day’s marching.
According to the statements that I gathered and have now recorded,
Shekka, I should suppose, corresponds with a position described by
Escayrac de Lauture in his valuable accounts of these regions, and
which he distinguishes by the name of Sook-Deleyba (_i.e._, the market
near the Deleb palms). Shekka, in fact, appears to be an important
market-place and rendezvous for the itinerant slave-dealers, as well as
for the Baggara Bedouins, many of whom have permanent homes there; it
is the site also of the residence of Munzel, the Sheikh of the Rizegat.
But it is most notorious of all as being the principal resort of all
the great Kordofan slave-traders: being beyond the jurisdiction of
Egypt and its arbitrary officials, who are in the habit of extorting a
specific sum per head for hush-money on every slave that is conveyed
into the country, it is a spot that enables them to transact their
nefarious business free from the burdensome imposts, and to transmit
their living merchandise in whatever direction may suit them, all over
the provinces of the Soudan.
[Sidenote: ROUTE TO DARFOOR.]
The journey from Shekka to Aboo Harras, I was given to understand,
would require eighteen days, and even with very long days’ marching
could not be accomplished in less than fifteen days. All my informants
agreed most positively in asserting that there were no streams of any
magnitude to be crossed, and that even in the height of the rainy
season there were no brooks nor swamps to offer any serious obstacle to
travellers. There was, however, no time of the year, not even in the
middle of winter, when the Bahr-el-Arab could be crossed by any other
means than swimming, or by rafts constructed of grass.
The caravan-roads from Dehm Nduggo to Darfoor were closed at the time
of my visit. They nearly all started in a N.N.W. direction. Almost
immediately after leaving the Seriba, the traveller would have to cross
the Beery, and proceed for three or four leagues until he arrived at
the subsidiary Seriba Deleyb; another day’s march to the north-west
would bring him to one of the minor Seribas, of which the controller’s
name was Soliman; and two days more would find him at a Seriba on
the Gebel Mangyat, as the natives call that district. The notorious
copper-mines Hofrat-el-Nahahs[74] are said to be situated six days’
journey to the south of this region of the Manga, and to lie on the
southern frontier of Darfoor. The copper is brought into the market
either in the shape of clumsily-formed rings, full of angles, varying
in weight from five pounds to fifty, or in long oval cakes of very
imperfect casting. The price that I had to pay for the hundred rottoli
(about 80 lbs.) that I obtained from Seebehr was 1500 piastres, or
75 Maria Theresa dollars, which would be represented by about £15 of
English money.
Seebehr had a Seriba on the frontiers of Darfoor that was in constant
intercourse with this important place, and through his interest I
obtained a sample of the ore of these far-famed mines. It weighed about
five pounds. One half of it I handed to the Khedive of Egypt at an
audience with which he honoured me; the other half I deposited in the
Mineralogical Museum at Berlin. The specimen consisted of copper-pyrite
and quartz, with an earthy touch of malachite, commonly called green
carbonite of copper, but containing a very small quantity of the real
metal.
No systematic mining seems to be carried on in the “Hofrat-el-Nahahs,”
and the man who brought me the sample carefully concealed in his
clothes, informed me that the ore was found lying like loose rubble in
the dry bed of a khor. It may be presumed that by boring galleries,
or even by hewing out quarries, a large supply of the metal might be
obtained without any vast expenditure of time or money, for even in
the present condition of things, while the solid rock still remains
intact, the yield of copper for years past has been very considerable.
The Foorian copper even now takes a prominent part in the commerce of
the entire Soudan; it is conveyed across Wadai to Kano in Haussa, and,
according to Barth, it holds its own in the market even against that
imported from Tripoli.
FOOTNOTES:
[64] “Kurnuk” is the term used by the Nubians and Foorians
for a shed; the corresponding expression in the Soudan
Arabic being “Daher-el-Tor,” literally, the back of
an ox; thus “kurnuk” means generally any roof with a
horizontal ridge.
[65] Dr. Steudner died on the 10th of April, 1863, from an
attack of fever; a few days before that, in company
with Heuglin, he had commenced his first journey into
the interior; his object had been to reconnoitre the
country to the west of the Meshera, and to find a
suitable place for the accommodation of Miss Tinné’s
party during the rainy season.
[66] The real name of the firm is Ali-Aboo-Amoory, and
it has acquired an undesirable notoriety for its
fraudulent dealings with Miss Tinné’s expedition.
[67] “Kulloo” is in this neighbourhood the generic name for
brooks of this character.
[68] This was the most westerly point that Heuglin reached
in Central Africa.
[69] In the dialect of the Soudan these distinctions are
respectively rendered by the terms “Dar” (cultivated
land) and “Akabah” (wilderness).
[70] The Khartoomers have given the word Dehm an Arabic
plural, “Dwehm;” and by this term they distinguish the
great slave marts of the west.
[71] The entire number that year rose to 2700.
[72] Seebehr’s name at full length was
Seebehr-Rahama-Gyimme-Abel.
[73] Ferteet is the term by which the Foorians and Baggara
distinguish the Kredy tribes as a nation from the
Niam-niam. In a wider sense the term is applied to
all the heathen nations to the south of Darfoor. In
the Soudan the guinea-worm is also called Ferteet,
probably because the heathen negroes act especially
liable to its attacks.
[74] There is much uncertainty about the exact geographical
position of these famous mines. The accounts differ
widely, so that I can only approximately determine
the precise situation. According to Brown, Hofrat is
twenty-three and a half days’ journey from Kobbeh,
the capital of Darfoor, whilst according to Barth it
is only eight good days’ march from Tendelti, which
is a day’s journey from Kobbeh. I should imagine that
it probably lies a little to the west of the position
that I have assigned it in my map: of one thing I am
certain—it lies to the west of the roads to Darfoor.