"Our vessel is one of eighty tons, and we muster in all, masters,
servants and crew, twenty-five souls. We certainly cannot complain,
seeing that most of the boats on the Nile carry a hundred people, all
told, without mentioning those which are laden with a cargo of two or
three hundred slaves, packed together like herrings in a barrel, or
perched like fowls on planks laid horizontally from one mast to the
other.
"Happily we shall not meet on the river with any vessel employed in
the slave trade. Baker is at this moment at Gondokoro with his river
police. His is a noble task, but it will not have the results
anticipated from it, so long as he does not exercise the same amount
of surveillance over the land routes that he does on the Nile. The
Governor of Kordofan, I am told, has in this present year allowed
more than five hundred slave-dealers to pass through his territory.
The majority of these _moudirs_ are slave-dealers themselves, and so
far from hindering the traffic, against which Baker is protesting so
energetically, they encourage and protect it.
"In the fore-part of the vessel, a sort of horse-box has been
constructed for our horses, and in the after part, a partition
separates us from the servants and crew, and furnishes us with a
cabin, itself divided again into two compartments, one for Madame de
Guéran and Miss Poles, and the other for us. These vessels,
constructed for the navigation of the Upper Nile, are called
_negghers_. The one we have chartered has been sent to us from
Khartoum, and in all probability we shall retain it for the remainder
of our journey along the river, that is, if we shape our course
towards Gondokoro. It has only one mast, about twenty feet high, with
an enormous yard and a lateen sail.
"We have set sail! The north wind, which prevails here throughout the
greater part of the year, is in our favour, and we take advantage of
its good-will to embark.
"Very soon we make out, on the left bank, El-Obisch, about two
kilometres from the river, on the right bank, Kennour, and, some
hours afterwards, our attention was called to the mouth of an
important river, the Atbara, which rises on the confines of
Abyssinia.
"The breadth of the Nile is imposing in the extreme; enormous forests
stretch out into the distance on the one hand, and on the other may
be seen, beyond the vast plains or savannahs which border on the
stream, the desert of Bahiouda. At sunset this desert, lying on the
western side, has the appearance of being enveloped in a vast
conflagration, which is reflected on the tops of the lofty trees on
the eastern bank. Our vessel glides slowly on, and seems to be
complacently regarding itself in the calm, clear water, whilst large
flocks of goats and sheep, and herds of oxen and camels wend their
way to quench their thirst in the stream.
"And now the scene changes, the trees give place to plants; clumps of
calotropis, bushes of acacia, thickets of salvadora, plantations of
durra. Turtle doves, white-throated swifts, widow-birds in their
sombre dress of velvety black with yellow epaulettes, and Numidian
cranes flit to and fro in this ocean of verdure.
"To-day we disembarked, after having ordered the captain to sail on
and pick us up at Chendi. We wanted to ride a few miles by way of
varying our pleasure.
"A gallop of two hours brought us to the ancient town of Meröe,
remarkable for its handsome ruins and its pyramids. Meröe, some
thousands of years ago was, as you no doubt know, the capital of a
flourishing kingdom, renowned for its commerce, its sacred college
and its monuments. In this country, despised in our day, a gigantic
past springs up every now and then from the ground beneath your feet!
"At sunset we had to seek a halting-place, and this was offered to us
by the Djaalin Arabs, who placed two very comfortable tents at our
disposal. Just as, after a somewhat light supper, we were going to
retire to our sleeping apartments, a peculiar odour, for which none
of us could account, suddenly reached our olfactory organs. Our
interpreter, Ali, who had accompanied us, was despatched for
information, and without any loss of time he edified us by a
description of a very curious custom. The women of this country, in
order To render themselves as pleasing as possible to their husbands,
and to replace those charms of which time may have robbed them, have
conceived the idea of attraction by means of perfumes, with which
they impregnate themselves to such an extent that the odour appears
natural to them. To arrive at this result, they dig a ditch, fill it
with live charcoal, throw in fragrant plants and sweet-smelling wood,
and, then, covered from head to foot in a huge sheet, they seat
themselves over the ditch, and thus take an aromatic bath. Their
husbands, deeply sensible of this delicate attention, forget in the
power of their perfume, their weakness in the matter of beauty.
"'I suppose,' remarked Périères, 'that in this country a man would
never say that his better half was pretty. He would dilate his
nostrils, take a voluptuous sniff and exclaim, 'How nice my wife does
smell!'
"This morning we went once more on board our vessel, which had kept
moving all night, and awaited us at Chendi. This place recalls many
an ancient glory; it was, they say, the famous island of Meröe of
old, a powerful state of which even Thebes was a tributary. All this
splendour belongs to the past, but Chendi, anxious still to be talked
about, has for a long time been a slave depôt.
"Our vessel now lands us on the other side of the stream, the left
bank, at a place far less ancient, in which the houses are crowded
together without any regularity or design, very much like ant hills,
but thickly inhabited and often visited by slave and ivory merchants;
it is called Matamma. Still under the charm of our last evening's
excursion, we not only make an inspection of the town on horseback,
but we venture as far as the edge of the famous desert of Bahiouda,
of which, up to the present time, we had only seen the undulations
from the deck of our vessel. This excursion led to an adventure, a
very dramatic incident, which made a great impression upon me, and
will, I feel sure, have a similar effect upon you."