on us, here in the midst of the black population in the south. A
wooden Black Forest house-clock, with weights, beat in regular time;
some half-broken European chairs stood round the fixed table, a small
book-shelf was placed behind it, with a selection of the German classics
and historical works; in the corner the Turkish divan, which could not be
dispensed with even here. Above the great table, and beside the canopied
bed in the opposite corner, hung bell-pulls, which communicated with
the kitchen. An inquisitive Nesnas ape looked in at the grated window
next the door; and across the little court-yard we saw the busy Ursula,
in a crimson-flowered gown, tripping hither and thither among little
naked black slave-boys and girls, ordering them to do this and that with
a somewhat scolding voice, and peeping into the steaming-pots in the
adjoining kitchen. We saw nothing of her the whole morning; not even
during the excellent and savoury repast which she had prepared for us;
it was only after dinner that she presented herself, with many curtseys,
to receive our commendations. She lamented over the insufficiency of her
cooking apparatus, and vehemently reproached Herr Bauer because he had
no intentions of leaving this detestable, dirty, hot country, although
he had promised her to do so from one year to the other. She came hither
with Bauer, and has been eleven years in the country, and four years
in Kamlîn. He intends to return to Germany in another year, to settle
in Styria or Thuringia with his savings, and, like his father, to be a
peasant again.
After rising from table, the son of Nureddin Effendi also sent us a
Turkish dinner, ready cooked, of twelve to fifteen dishes, which however,
after our European repast, we left to the servants. We had also seen
the factories that morning, and had tasted the fine brandy (called
Marienbad), which Bauer prepares chiefly from sugar-cane and dates. The
business seemed to be in the best order, and even the cleanliness, so
unusual in this country, of the rooms, the vessels, and utensils, were
proofs of the solid basis upon which this factory, worked by slaves
alone, is conducted. The pleasant impression made upon us by this visit
was also considerably increased by discovering that Bauer possessed a
second piece of the above-mentioned marble inscription, which had been
discovered in the ruins of Soba. He presented me with the fragment, which
was easily joined with the other piece, though we had still not got the
complete inscription. The fragment shows the traces of twelve lines on
the one side, and of nine on the other. The characters can be distinctly
read here also; but the name ⲓⲁⲕⲱⲃ is alone intelligible. It is either
very barbarous Greek, or a peculiar language formerly spoken in Soba.
In fact, we know, through Selîm, that the inhabitants of Soba had their
sacred books in the Greek language, but translated them also into their
own.
After we had also paid a visit to the son of Nureddin Effendi, we
started with the promise to call upon him again on our return.
From Kamlîn the banks continue at an equal elevation. The character of a
river valley is lost. There is no longer a deposit of black earth; the
precipitous and high banks consist of a primitive soil, and a calcareous
conglomerate, which, by Bauer’s account, can be easily burnt into plaster.
On the morning of the 21st we came to a considerable bend of the river
towards the east; the wind became, on that account, so unfavourable,
that our Kawass disembarked, to press into our service people from the
neighbourhood to draw our boat along. I walked for several hours along
the western bank, as far as ARBAGI, a deserted village, built of black
bricks, but on the remains of a still older place, as I discovered from
the walls of burnt bricks. This place was formerly the chief centre of
the commerce of the Sudan, which, at a later period, was transferred
to Messelemîeh. Soon after this we saw the two most northerly growing
BAOBABS, which here are called HÓMARA. These giant trees of the creation
(Adansonia digitata) become more and more frequent, south of this spot,
and at Sero they are among the common trees of the country. One of the
stems which I paced round, measured above 60 feet in circumference, and
was certainly not one of the largest of its kind, as they are still
not numerous here. At this season they were leafless, and stretched
out their bare branches far above the surrounding green trees, which
looked like low bushes beside them. I found their fruit, which is called
GUNGULES,[44] here and there among the Arabs; they resemble small
gourds, in the form of pears, and have a light hairy surface. If the
hard, tough shell is broken, a number of kernels are found inside, which
are surrounded by a dry, sweetish, sourish pulp, which is nevertheless
pleasant to the taste. The leaves are digitate.
On the 22nd of February we arrived on the western bank, at a small
village, whose inhabitants, men, women, and children, fled with terror
at our approach across the sandy plain to the wood, probably because
they were afraid of being pressed to draw the boat on farther. On the
opposite bank there was another village, and from it we saw a magnificent
procession of men, dressed out in the Arabian and Turkish costume,
march down to the river with some beautifully bridled horses. It was
the Kaschef, and the principal Sheikh of ABU HARAS, who had heard about
us from Achmed Pascha, as we had intended to go from this spot into the
desert to Mandera with camels and guides. The horses were intended for
us, and we therefore rode to the house of the Kaschef, to make some more
inquiries about the antiquities of Mandera and Qala. As the desert road
to the shore of the Red Sea leads from here by that place, we found
several people who had passed near it. However, by what I gathered from
all the accounts, there seem to be only some hills in the form of a kind
of fortress at both these places, or, at the most, some roughly-built
walls, intended to protect the caravans, but no ancient buildings or
hieroglyphic inscriptions. In Qala there might be some camels and horses,
also, scratched into the rock by Arabs or other people, such as we have
frequently seen in the Great Desert near the well of Murhad, and in other
places.
We therefore determined to relinquish this desert journey, and to go
farther up the river instead, that we might become acquainted, as far as
our time permitted, with the natural character of the Nile river, its
banks, and neighbouring inhabitants.
After a short quarter of an hour from Abu Haras, we came to the mouth
of the RAHAD, which, in the rainy season, conveys a considerable mass
of water into the Nile, but was now nearly dry, and had only a little
stagnant water, which next month may perhaps also disappear.
I left the boat as often as possible, to get acquainted with the banks.
To go farther inland was of itself interdicted chiefly by the wood,
which clothes both sides of the river, and is nearly impenetrable. There,
in luxuriant splendour, grow the shady, high-domed tamarind-tree, the
tower-like hómara (Baobab), the many-branched gemús (sycamore-tree),
and the various kinds of the brittle, gum-yielding sont-trees. Creeping
plants, often the thickness of a man’s body, climb up their branches
like gigantic serpents, in innumerable windings, to their very summits,
and down again to the ground, where, along with the low shrubs, they
fill up every gap between the huge stems. In addition to this, scarcely
one of ten among the trees or shrubs has not thorns, which renders
any attempt to penetrate the close thicket not only dangerous, but
impossible. Several among them—for instance, the sittere-tree—have thorns
placed together in pairs, and in such a manner, that one thorn bends
forwards, the other back; if any one, therefore, approaches the branches
carelessly, he may be sure that his clothes will carry away with them
some unavoidable signs, not to be obliterated here without difficulty,
and then imperfectly. Some other thorny trees look extremely ornamental,
and growing in more open situations, they rise like slender young
birches. We distinguished two species which are usually joined together,
and can only be known from one another because the bark of the one stem
is of a brilliant red colour up to the outermost little branches, like
a growth of blood-vessels, while that of the other is of a dark black
colour. Both of them have glistening long white thorns, which, with the
little green leaves, rise up with a sharp outline, as if they had been
painted with the brush.
Scarcely one of the birds, which frequently hovered around us in large
numbers, were known to me, even in Egypt. I shot many of them, and
had them stuffed by our cook, Siriân. Among them were some beautiful
silver-grey falcons (suqr schikl), guinea-fowls (gedâd el wadi), with
knobs of horn on the nose, and blue lappets on both sides of the head;
black and white rhinoceros birds (abu tuko) with huge beaks; some birds
quite black, with a bright crimson breast (abu labba); large brown and
white eagles (abu tôk), one of which, with outspread wings, measured
six feet; smaller brown eagles, the _hedâja_, and black and white ones,
which are called _ráchama_. These last, which are much more numerous
towards Egypt, are the same which we are in the habit of seeing among
the hieroglyphics. On the bank there are also great numbers of black and
white plovers, furnished with black curved spines on their wing-joints,
and the long-legged, completely white, _abu baqr_ (cow-birds), who are in
the habit of grazing on the backs of the buffaloes and cows.
We saw great bats frequently flying about in broad daylight; their long
golden-brown wings look bright through the branches, and suddenly they
hang head downwards on the branches like great yellow pears, and can then
easily be shot. They have long ears, and a strange trumpet-like nose.
We also hunted the MONKEYS, but from their agility they were very
difficult to reach. One day we found an immense tree, quite full of
monkeys; some of them hastily came down on our approach, and fled to a
distant thicket; others hid themselves among the foliage, quite at the
top; but some of them who considered both methods of escape dangerous,
sprang with inconceivably bold leaps from the uppermost branches of the
tall tree, which might have been about 100 feet high, to the smaller
trees standing near, whose thorny branches bent down beneath their weight
without letting them fall; they thus gained their end, and escaped my gun.
The CROCODILES become more numerous the farther south we go. The tongues
of the sandy islands are often covered with them. They generally lie in
the sun, close to the edge of the water, open their mouths, and seem to
sleep, but do not allow any one to approach them; but even if they are
hit by the shot they immediately dive into the river. It is therefore
very difficult to obtain one. Our Kawass only once made such a good shot
at a young crocodile, about three feet long, that it was unable to get
back to the water. It was brought to the boat, where it lived for several
days afterwards, to the terror of our little Nesnas monkey, Bachît.
It is no less difficult to approach the HIPPOPOTAMI, which we have
sometimes seen in great numbers, but with their heads alone above the
water. Once only a young hippopotamus stood quite clear out of the water
on a sandy island; it allowed us to come unusually near. The Kawass
shot, and hit it, naturally without the ball penetrating the thick hide,
whereupon the clumsy creature, with its unshapely head, its fat belly,
and short elephant legs, galloped off in a most comical manner to reach
the water close beside him, and immediately disappeared. They generally
are in the habit of coming on land only in the night, and they do much
injury in the fields of Durra and other plantations, by treading down and
devouring. It is not known that a hippopotamus was ever caught alive here.
We saw no lions, but we heard their roaring in the distance throughout
the starlight night; there is something very solemn in the deep and
sonorous voice of this royal beast.
The 24th of February we came to a second tributary river of the Nile,
the DENDER, which is larger than the Rahad. I went up part of it to see
(which was impossible at its mouth) whether the water was still flowing,
and farther up I discovered that, where the still water had collected
into small canals, certainly a very feeble current yet existed; in the
rainy season the Dender must rise more than twenty feet, as may be seen
by its bed; I found its banks were cultivated with cotton bushes, gourds,
and other useful plants.
The heat is not excessive, in the morning about eight o’clock it is
usually 23° R.; about mid-day till about five o’clock, 29°; and about
eleven o’clock at night it is 22° (83¾°, 97¼°, 81½° Fahr.).
We spend our evenings in our boat; here I make our Kawass, Hagi Ibrahim,
inform us about the geography; or I take some Nubian sailors into my
cabin to learn their language. I have already made a long vocabulary
in the Nubian language; comparing it with other lists in Rüppell and
Cailliaud, I found many words in the Koldági language spoken in the
southern territories of Kordofan which agree with them; this proves
there is an intimate connection between the two languages. The Arabs
are in the habit of calling the Nubian language _lisân rotâna_, which
I at first supposed to be its actual name; but it only means a foreign
tongue different from the Arabic. They do not, therefore, only speak of
a _Rotâna Kenûs_, _Mahass_, _Donqolaui_, when they mean to designate the
three Nubian dialects, but also of a _Rotâna Dinkaui_, _Schilluk_—even
of a Rotâna _turki_ and _franki_, thus likewise of Turkish and French;
_i. e._ of European gibberish. The same error is the cause of the now
received designation of the Nubian as the Berber, and of their language
as the Berber language; for this is not the name of the people, nor of
their language, as is generally thought, but originally means only the
people speaking a foreign tongue, the _Barbaros_.
On the 25th of February we disembarked at SABA DOLEB; I searched for
ruins, but only found high domes in the form of bee-hives, built well and
solidly of bricks, about 20 feet high, and closely resembling the Greek
Thesauri, constructed of horizontal layers, lapping over inwardly. They
are tombs of holy Arab Sheikhs of a late period; the inhabitants of the
village could not tell us the date of their erection. Beneath the cupola,
and in the centre of the building, which is between 15 and 18 feet wide,
there is the long narrow tomb of the saint, surrounded with larger
stones, and covered with a number of small stones, which, according to a
superstition, must necessarily amount to a thousand; I found six domes
similar to these, most of them half, some wholly fallen to pieces; two,
however, in very good preservation, which are even still visited; a
seventh, probably the most recent, was built of unburnt bricks.
At WAD NEGUDI, a village situated to the west of the Nile, we found the
first DILÊB PALMS, with slender naked stems and small bushy crowns,
resembling, at a distance, the Date Palm, but when near, from their
leaves, like the Doum Palm. Their fruit is round, like that of the Doum
Palm, but of a larger size. These trees are said to be very abundant
on the tributary rivers towards the east; but here, on the Nile, they
are only to be found within a very small tract of land. The leaves are
regularly divided like a fan into a great number of connected folds, and
the leaf-stalk has strong serrated notches. The Rais of our boat, who
was with me, sawed off another leaf with one of these leaf-stalks; I
had it brought to the boat, to take it away with us. It is divided into
sixty-nine points, and is five feet and a quarter long, from that part of
the stalk where the fan begins, although it is still young, and therefore
its fan is still completely closed. Another larger one, which had just
unfolded itself, we set up in the boat as an umbrella, and sat beneath
its shade. We were obliged to make a path to those palm-trees through
gigantic woods of grass, which shoot up stiff and thick like corn-fields,
and cover large plains. The points of the blades towered up five or six
feet above our heads, and even the tall camels, which are bred here,
could hardly look over it.
On the 26th February we arrived at the village of ABU EL ABAS, on the
eastern bank. It is a chief town of this district, and the Kaschef who
lives here is placed over 112 villages. I there purchased a dog-ape
from a Turkish Kawass for a few piastres. This is the holy ape of the
ancient Egyptians, the Cynocephalus, which was dedicated to Thoth and
the Moon, and appears as the second among the four Gods of Death. It
is interesting to me to have a creature about me for some little time,
which I have seen innumerable times upon the monuments, and thereby to
observe the faithful apprehension and representation of its essential
and characteristic appearances in the ancient Egyptian sculpture. It is
remarkable that this ape, so peculiar to Egypt in ancient times, is now
only found in the south, and even there, it is not very common. How many
species of animals and plants, even manners and customs of men, with
which we become acquainted through the monuments of Egypt, can only now
be found in the most southern parts of ancient Ethiopia, so that now
many representations, for instance in the tombs of Benihassan, seem
to delineate scenes in this country rather than in Egypt. There is no
special name here for the Cynocephalus, only the general one, _qird_
(large monkey). Its head, hair, and colour, are not unlike those of a
dog, and hence its Greek name. Sometimes also it barks and snarls like a
dog. It is still young, and very good-natured, but far more intelligent
than Abeken’s pretty little Nesnas ape. It is extremely ludicrous when
it wishes to get something good to eat, which we have in our hands; it
then lays back its ears on its head, and knows how to express the utmost
delight, but remains sitting quiet like a good child, only chattering
with the lips, like an old wine-bibber. At the sight of the crocodile,
however, all the hair of its body bristled up; it uttered piercing
shrieks, and could scarcely be held down from terror.
On the 27th February we reached SENNÂR, the celebrated ancient capital
of the Sudan, whose king, before the conquest of the country by Ismael
Pascha, had dominion as far as Wadi Halfa, and ruled over a number of
smaller kings who paid him tribute. One would not suspect, from the
present aspect of the place, that only a short time since it was such a
powerful royal residence. Between six and seven hundred pointed straw
huts, Tukele, surrounded the piles of red-brick ruins, where formerly
the royal mansion stood. These bricks are now employed for building an
abode for Solimân Pascha, who is to reside in Sennâr; it was already so
far complete that the Wakil[45] of the absent Pascha was able to hold his
divan within it. We found him there, just as he was sitting in judgment.
Many other people, Sheikhs and Turks, were present; among them the Sheikh
Sandalôba, the chief of the Arabian merchants, and a relative of the
Sultâna Nasr, whose acquaintance we afterwards made in the village of
Sorîba, which she makes her royal residence. We paid a visit to this
distinguished man in his own house, with which honour he seemed much
gratified. His principal apartment is a dark, lofty hall, with a roof
resting on two pillars and four pilasters, upon which we mounted to
obtain a view over the town.
Meanwhile an anqareb was prepared for us, to sit upon in the court-yard;
they brought us mead (honey with water), and led a hyæna out of the
stable, here called Marafil, and two young lions, the largest of which,
belonging to Solimân Pascha, and two wethers, were taken to the boat,
as a present from his Wakil. I had the creature fastened down in the
hold, and as a welcome immediately received a violent scratch on my hand
from his sharp claws. His body is now above two feet long, and his voice
has already become a strong tenor. There is a most tumultuous scene now
every morning on our, not very large, boat, when we drink our tea at an
early hour in front of the cabin; on each side of the door, a monkey is
making its merry leaps, and when the lion is released from the hold of
the vessel, and on the deck, which is given to him during the day, we are
obliged to place our cups and pitchers in safety, as he endeavours to
reach them with his clumsy, but already strong claws.
On the 29th of February, about nine in the morning, we arrived at ABDÎN.
The 1st of March the wind was unfavourable to us, and we made very little
progress, so that we had plenty of time at our disposal for shooting
birds. Towards evening I came to a village romantically situated in a
creek formed by the river, spreading out at this point. Many huts, built
of straw, extended their pointed roofs upwards between the branches
and thick foliage of the trees. Narrow crooked paths, forming a real
labyrinth, led from one hut to the other, between thorns and trunks of
trees; within the huts, and in front of them, the black families were
lying, the children playing by a feeble lamp-light. I asked for some
milk, but was told to apply at an Arab village in the neighbourhood, to
which I was led by a man armed with a spear, the universal weapon of the
country. Making our way through thin shrubs and tall grass, we reached
the large troops of cattle belonging to the Arabs, who had raised their
mat huts round the pasture ground. The Fellahs who have settled here are
much browner than the wandering Arabs, though they are not negroes, but
they appear by race to be connected with the Nubian stock.
The 2nd of March we landed on an island close to the eastern bank. At
a short distance from the landing-place the Rais discovered a broken
crocodile egg, at a spot where there was some newly turned up ground.
He dug down with his hands, and found forty-four eggs lying beside each
other three feet deep in the sand. They were still covered with a slimy
coat, as they had been only laid the previous day or during the night.
Crocodiles prefer coming out of the river on a windy night, they bury
their eggs in the ground, cover them over, and the wind soon disperses
all traces of the disturbed earth. A few months afterwards the young ones
creep out. The eggs are like large goose’s eggs, but as much rounded
off at both ends as these are only at the blunt end. I had some of them
boiled, they are eatable, but have a disagreeable taste; therefore I
willingly left them to the sailors, who devoured them with a hearty
appetite.
We landed at the forsaken village of DÁHELA on the eastern bank, from
which I proceeded alone a distance of about three-quarters of an hour
inland. The character of the vegetation continues the same. The ground
is dry and level, the small hills and valleys which intersect it are not
the original forms of the ground, but seem only to have been produced
by rain. The farthest point I aimed at was a great tamarind-tree which
towered up splendidly from the lower trees and bushes, and round which
were fluttering a number of green and red birds hitherto unknown to me.
On my road, I first came to a settlement, Kumr betá Dáhela, where the
inhabitants of the village I mentioned above are accustomed to keep
their _villeggiatura_. They only remain here during the dry months, and
wander back in the beginning of the rainy season to their more solidly
built village on the bank of the river. The last village that I reached
is called ROMÂLI, a little above the place which is marked SERO on the
map, and which is situated at the 13° of north latitude. On the hot and
fatiguing road back, I was present at a burial; silent and serious,
without sound or lamentation, two corpses wrapped in white cloths were
borne by men on anqarebs, and were laid in a grave several feet deep,
in the wood, close to the passing road. Perhaps they had died of the
cholera-like plague, which we hear has broken out with virulence in these
southern parts.
We would willingly have gone up, as far as Fazoql, into the last province
in Mohammed Ali’s dominions, to become acquainted with the complete
change in the character of the country, which then again occurs,
beginning at Rosêres, and exhibiting so many phenomena, plants and
animals, peculiar to the tropics; but our time had come to an end.
The Rais received orders to lower the sails and masts; by which the
boat at once lost its dignified appearance, and it floated down with
the current of the river like a wreck. Soon the agreeable silence in
the vessel, which had hitherto hastened on as if of its own accord,
was interrupted by the shrill and discordant singing of the rowers,
struggling against the wind.