A journey to Central Africa

I left Abdôm on the morning of February twentieth. Our road lay southward, along the edge of the wheat-fields, over whose waves we saw the island-like groups of palms at a little distance. For several miles the bank of the river was covered with a continuous string of villages. After skirting this glorious garden land for two hours, we crossed a sandy tract, overgrown with the poisonous euphorbia, to avoid a curve in the river. During the whole of the afternoon, we travelled along the edge of the cultivated land, and sometimes in the midst of it, obliging my camels to stumble clumsily over the raised trenches which carried water from the river to the distant parts of the fields. Large, ruined forts of unburnt brick, exceedingly picturesque at a distance, stood at intervals between the desert and the harvest-land.

The next morning was hot and sultry, with not a breath of air stirring. I rose at dawn and walked ahead for two hours, through thickets of euphorbia higher than my head, and over patches of strong, dark-green grass. The sakias were groaning all along the shore, and the people every where at work in the fields. The wheat was in various stages of growth, from the first thick green of the young blades to the full head. Barley was turning a pale yellow, and the dookhn, the heads of which had already been gathered, stood brown and dry. Djebel Deeka, on my right, rose bold and fair above the lines of palms, and showed a picturesque glen winding in between its black-purple peaks. It was a fine feature of the landscape, which would have been almost too soft and lovely without it.

Before nine o’clock we passed the large town of Korti, which, however, is rather a cluster of small towns, scattered along between the wheat-fields and the river. Some of the houses were large and massive, and with their blank walls and block-like groups, over which the doum-tree spread its arch and the date-palm hung its feathery crown, made fine African pictures—admirable types of the scenery along the Nubian Nile. Beyond the town we came upon a hot, dusty plain, sprinkled with stunted euphorbia, over which I could see the point where the Nile turns westward. Towards noon we reached the town of Ambukol, which I found to be a large agglomeration of mud and human beings, on the sand-hills, a quarter of a mile from the river. An extensive pile of mud in the centre denoted a fortress or government station of some sort. There were a few lazy Arabs sitting on the ground, on the shady side of the walls, and some women going back and forth with water-jars, but otherwise, for all the life it presented, the place might have been deserted. The people we met saluted me with much respect, and those who were seated rose and remained standing until I had passed. I did not enter the town, but made direct for a great acacia tree near its western end. The nine camels and nine men of my caravan all rested under the shade, and there was room for as many more. A number of Arabs looked on from a distance, or hailed my camel-men, to satisfy their curiosity regarding me, but no one came near or annoyed us in any way. I took breakfast leisurely on my carpet, drank half a gourd of mareesa, and had still an hour to wait, before the new camels were laden. The Kababish, who had accompanied me from Khartoum, wanted a certificate, so I certified that Saïd was a good camel-man and Mohammed worthless as a guide. They then drank a parting jar of mareesa, and we went from under the cool acacia into the glare of the fierce sun. Our road all the afternoon was in the Desert, and we were obliged to endure a most intense and sultry heat.

The next day I travelled westward over long akabas, or reaches of the Desert, covered with clumps of thorns, nebbuk and the jasmine tree. The long mountain on the opposite bank was painted in rosy light against the sky, as if touched with the beams of a perpetual sunrise. My eyes always turned to it with a sense of refreshment, after the weary glare of the sand. In the morning there was a brisk wind from the north-east, but towards noon it veered to the south-west, and then to the south, continuing to blow all day with great force. As I rode westward through the hot hours of the afternoon, it played against my face like a sheet of flame. The sky became obscured with a dull, bluish haze, and the sands of the Beyooda, on my left, glimmered white and dim, as if swept by the blast of a furnace. There were occasional gusts that made the flesh shrink as if touched with a hot iron, and I found it impossible to bear the wind full on my face. One who has never felt it, cannot conceive the withering effect of such a heat. The earth seems swept with the first fires of that conflagration beneath which the heavens will shrivel up as a scroll, and you instinctively wonder to see the palms standing green and unsinged. My camel-men crept behind the camels to get away from it, and Achmet and Ali muffled up their faces completely. I could not endure the sultry heat occasioned by such a preparation, and so rode all day with my head in the fire.

About three o’clock in the afternoon we approached the Nile again. There was a grove of sont and doum-trees on the bank, surrounding a large quadrangular structure of clay, with square towers at the corners. Graveyards stretched for nearly a mile along the edge of the Desert, and six large, dome-like heaps of clay denoted the tombs of as many holy men. We next came upon the ruins of a large village, with a fort and a heavy palace-like building of mud. Before reaching Edabbe, the terminus of the caravan route from Kordofan, the same evening, I rode completely around the bend of the Nile, so that my dromedary’s head was at last turned towards Wadi Halfa. I was hot, tired, and out of temper, but a gourd of cool water, at the first house we reached, made all right again. There were seven vessels in the river, waiting for the caravans. One had just arrived from Kordofan, and the packages of gum were piled up along the shore. We were immediately followed by the sailors, who were anxious that I should hire their vessels. I rode past the town, which does not contain more than thirty houses in all, and had my tent pitched on the river bank.

The Nile is here half a mile broad, and a long reach of his current is visible to the north and south. The opposite bank was high and steep, lined at the water’s edge with a belt of beans and lupins, behind which rose a line of palms, and still higher the hills of pale, golden-hued sand, spotted like a leopard’s hide, with clumps of a small mimosa. The ground was a clear, tawny yellow, but the spots were deep emerald. Below the gorgeous drapery of these hills, the river glittered in a dark, purple-blue sheet. The coloring of the mid-African landscapes is truly unparalleled. To me, it became more than a simple sense; it grew to be an appetite. When, after a journey in the Desert, I again beheld the dazzling green palms and wheat-fields of the Nile, I imagined that there was a positive sensation on the retina. I felt, or seemed to feel, physically, the colored rays—beams of pure emerald, topaz and amethystine lustre—as they struck the eye.

At Edabbe I first made acquaintance with a terrible pest, which for many days afterwards occasioned me much torment—a small black fly, as venomous as the musquito, and much more difficult to drive away. I sat during the evening with my head, neck and ears closely bound up, notwithstanding the heat. After the flies left, a multitude of beetles, moths, winged ants and other nameless creatures came in their place. I sat and sweltered, murmuring for the waters of Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, and longing for a glass of sherbet cooled with the snows of Lebanon.

We were up with the first glimmering of dawn. The sky was dull and hazy, and the sun came up like a shield of rusty copper, as we started. Our path lay through the midst of the cultivated land, sometimes skirting the banks of the Nile, and sometimes swerving off to the belts of sont and euphorbia which shut out the sand. The sakias, turned by a yoke of oxen each, were in motion on the river, and the men were wading through the squares of wheat, cotton and barley, turning the water into them. All farming processes, from sowing to reaping, were going on at the same time. The cultivated land was frequently more than a mile in breadth, and all watered from the river. The sakias are taxed four hundred and seventy-five piastres each, notwithstanding the sum fixed by Government is only three hundred. The remainder goes into the private treasuries of the Governors. For this reason, many persons, unable to pay the tax, emigrate into Kordofan and elsewhere. This may account for the frequent tracts of the finest soil which are abandoned. I passed many fine fields, given up to the halfeh grass, which grew most rank and abundant. My dromedary had a rare time of it, cropping the juicy bunches as he went along. The country is thickly settled, and our road was animated with natives, passing back and forth.

About noon, we saw in advance, on the eastern bank of the Nile, a bold, bluff ridge, crowned with a large square building. This the people pointed out to us as the location of Old Dongola. As we approached nearer, a long line of mud buildings appeared along the brow of the hill, whose northern slope was cumbered with ruins. We left the caravan track and rode down to the ferry place at the river, over a long stretch of abandoned fields, where the cotton was almost choked out with grass, and the beans and lentils were growing wild in bunches. After my tent had been pitched in a cotton-patch, I took a grateful bath in the river, and then crossed in the ferry-boat to the old town. The hill upon which it is built terminates abruptly in a precipice of red sandstone rock, about a hundred feet in height. Four enormous fragments have been broken off, and lie as they fell, on the edge of the water. A steep path through drifts of sliding yellow sand leads around the cliffs, up to the dwellings. I found the ascent laborious, as the wind, which had veered to the west, was as hot as on the previous day; but a boatman and one of my camel-men seized a hand each and hauled me up most conveniently. At the summit, all was ruin; interminable lines of walls broken down, and streets filled up with sand. I went first to the Kasr, or Palace, which stands on the highest part of the hill. It is about forty feet in height, having two stories and a broad foundation wall, and is built mostly of burnt brick and sandstone. It is the palace of the former Dongolese Kings, and a more imposing building than one would expect to find in such a place. Near the entrance is an arched passage, leading down to some subterranean chambers, which I did not explore. It needed something more than the assurance of an old Nubian, however, to convince me that there was an underground passage from this place to Djebel Berkel. A broad flight of stone steps ascended to the second story, in which are many chambers and passages. The walls are covered with Arabic inscriptions, written in the plaster while it was yet moist. The hall of audience had once a pavement of marble, several blocks of which still remain, and the ceiling is supported in the centre by three shafts of granite, taken from some old Egyptian ruin. The floors are covered with tiles of burnt brick, but the palm-logs which support them have given away in many places, rendering one’s footing insecure. Behind the hall of audience is a passage, with a niche, in each side of which is also an ancient pillar of granite. From the tenor of one of the Arabic inscriptions, it appears that the building was originally designed for a mosque, and that it was erected in the year 1317, by Saf-ed-deen Abdallah, after a victory over the infidels.

I ascended to the roof of the palace, which is flat and paved with stones. The view was most remarkable. The height on which Old Dongola is built, falls off on all sides, inland as well as towards the river, so that to the east one overlooks a wide extent of desert—low hills of red sand, stretching away to a dim, hot horizon. To the north, the hill slopes gradually to the Nile, covered with the ruins of old buildings. North-east, hardly visible through the sandy haze, rose a high, isolated peak, with something like a tower on its summit. To the south and east the dilapidated city covered the top of the hill—a mass of ashy-gray walls of mud and stone, for the most part roofless and broken down, while the doors, courts and alleys between them were half choked up with the loose sand blown in from the Desert. The graveyards of the former inhabitants extended for more than a mile through the sand, over the dreary hills behind the town. Among them were a great number of conical, pointed structures of clay and stones, from twenty to thirty feet in height. The camel-men said they were the tombs of rossool—prophets, or holy men. I counted twenty-five in that portion of the cemetery which was visible. The whole view was one of entire and absolute desolation, heightened the more by the clouds of sand which filled the air, and which, in their withering heat, seemed to be raining ruin upon the land.

I afterwards walked through the city, and was surprised to find many large, strong houses of stone and burnt brick, with spacious rooms, the walls of which were plastered and whitewashed. The lintels of the doors and windows were stone, the roofs in many places, where they still remained, covered with tiles, and every thing gave evidence of a rich and powerful city. Now, probably not more than one-fifth of the houses are inhabited. Here and there the people have spread a roofing of mats over the open walls, and nestled themselves in the sand. I saw several such places, the doors, or rather entrances to which, were at the bottom of loose sand-hills that constantly slid down and filled the dingy dwellings. In my walk I met but one or two persons, but as we returned again to the river, I saw a group of Dongolese women on the highest part of the cliff. They were calling in shrill tones and waving their hands to some persons in the ferry-boat on the river below, and needed no fancy to represent the daughters of Old Dongola lamenting over its fall.

Some Dongolese djellabiàt, or merchants, just returned from Kordofan, were in the ferry-boat. One of them showed me a snuff-box which he had bought from a native of Fertit, beyond Dar-Fūr. It was formed of the shell of some fruit, with a silver neck attached. By striking the head of the box on the thumb-nail, exactly one pinch was produced. The raïs took off his mantle, tied one end of it to the ring in the bow and stood thereon, holding the other end with both hands stretched above his head. He made a fine bronze figure-head for the boat, and it was easy to divine her name: The Nubian. We had on board a number of copper-hued women, whose eyelids were stained with kohl, which gave them a ghastly appearance.

Soon after my tent had been pitched, in the afternoon, a man came riding up from the river on a donkey, leading a horse behind him. He had just crossed one of the water-courses on his donkey, and was riding on, holding the horse’s rope in his hand, when the animal started back at the water-course, jerking the man over the donkey’s tail and throwing him violently on the ground. He lay as if dead for a quarter of an hour, but Achmet finally brought him to consciousness by pouring the contents of a leathern water-flask over his head, and raising him to a sitting posture. His brother, who had charge of a sakia on the bank, brought me an angareb in the evening, in acknowledgment of this good office. It is a good trait in the people, that they are always grateful for kindness. The angareb, however, did not prove of much service, for I was so beset by the black gnats that it was impossible to sleep. They assailed my nose, mouth, ears and eyes in such numbers that I was almost driven mad. I rubbed my face with strong vinegar, but it only seemed to attract them the more. I unwound my turban, and rolled it around my neck and ears, but they crept under the folds and buzzed and bit until I was forced to give up the attempt.

Our road, the next morning, lay near the river, through tracks of thick halfeh, four or five feet high. We constantly passed the ruins of villages and the naked frames of abandoned sakias. The soil was exceedingly rich, as the exuberant growth of halfeh proved, but for miles and miles there was no sign of life. The tyranny of the Turks has depopulated one of the fairest districts of Nubia. The wind blew violently from the north, and the sandy haze and gray vapor in the air became so dense that I could scarcely distinguish the opposite bank of the Nile. The river was covered with white caps, and broke on the beach below with a wintry roar. As we journeyed along through the wild green grass and orchards of sont, passing broken walls and the traces of old water-courses, I could have believed myself travelling through some deserted landscape of the North. I was chilled with the strong wind, which roared in the sont and made my beard whistle under my nose like a wisp of dry grass. Several ships passed us, scudding up stream under bare poles, and one, which had a single reef shaken out of her large sail, dashed by like a high-pressure steamer.

After two or three hours we passed out of this region. The Desert extended almost to the water’s edge, and we had nothing but sand and thorns. The wind by this time was more furious than ever, and the air was so full of sand that we could not see more than a hundred yards on either hand. The sun gave out a white, ghastly light, which increased the dreariness of the day. All trace of the road was obliterated, and we could only travel at random among the thorns, following the course of the Nile, which we were careful to keep in view. My eyes, ears, and nostrils were soon filled with sand, and I was obliged to bind my turban so as nearly to cover my face, leaving only space enough to take a blind view of the way we were going. At breakfast time, after two hours of this martyrdom, I found a clump of thorns so thick as to shut off the wind, but no sooner had I dismounted and crept under its shelter than I experienced a scorching heat from the sun, and was attacked by myriads of the black gnats. I managed to eat something in a mad sort of way, beating my face and ears continually, and was glad to thrust my head again into the sand-storm, which drove off the worse pests. So for hours we pursued our journey. I could not look in the face of the wind, which never once fell. The others suffered equally, and two of the camel-men lagged so, that we lost sight of them entirely. It was truly a good fortune that I did not take the short road, east of the Nile, from Merawe to New Dongola. In the terrible wastes of the Nubian Desert, we could scarcely have survived such a storm.

Nearly all the afternoon we passed over deserted tracts, which were once covered with flourishing fields. The water-courses extend for nearly two miles from the river, and cross the road at intervals of fifty yards. But now the villages are level with the earth, and the sand whistles over the traces of fields and gardens, which it has not yet effaced. Two hours before sunset the sun disappeared, and I began to long for the town of Handak, our destination. Achmet and I were ahead, and the other camels were not to be seen any longer, so as sunset came on I grew restless and uneasy. The palms by this time had appeared again on the river’s brink, and there was a village on our left, in the sand. We asked again for Handak. “Just at the corner of yon palms,” said the people. They spoke with a near emphasis, which encouraged me. The Arabic dialect of Central Africa has one curious characteristic, which evidently springs from the want of a copious vocabulary. Degree, or intensity of meaning is usually indicated by accent alone. Thus, when they point to an object near at hand they say: henàk, “there;” if it is a moderate distance off, they lengthen the sound into “hen-a-a-ak;” while, if it is so far as to be barely visible, the last syllable is sustained with a full breath—“hen-a-a-a-a-a-àk!” In the same way, saā signifies “an hour;” sa-a-a-ā, “two hours,” &c. This habit of speech gives the language a very singular and eccentric character.

We pushed on till the spot was reached, but as far ahead as the sand would permit us to see, could discern no house. We asked again; the town commenced at the next corner of the palms ahead of us. I think this thing must have happened to us five or six times, till at last I got into that peculiarly amiable mood which sees nothing good in Heaven or Earth. If my best friend had come to meet me, I should have given him but a sour greeting. My eyes were blinded, my head dull and stupid, and my bones sore from twelve hours in the saddle. As it grew dark, we were overtaken by four riders mounted on fine dromedaries. They were going at a sweeping trot, and our beasts were ambitious enough to keep pace with them for some time. One of them was a stately shekh, with a white robe and broad gold border and fringe. From what the people said of him, I took him to be the Melek, or King of Dongola.

Meanwhile, it was growing dark. We could see nothing of the town, though a woman who had been walking beside us, said we were there already. She said she had a fine house, which we could have for the night, since it was almost impossible for a tent to stand in such a wind. As I had already dipped into the night, I determined to reach Handak at all hazards, and after yet another hour, succeeded. Achmet and I dismounted in a ruined court-yard, and while I sat on a broken wall, holding the camels, he went to look for our men. It was a dismal place, in the gathering darkness, with the wind howling and the sand drifting on all sides, and I wondered what fiend had ever tempted me to travel in Africa. Before long the woman appeared and guided us to a collection of miserable huts on the top of the hill. Her fine house proved to be a narrow, mud-walled room, with a roof of smoked dourra-stalks. It shut off the wind, however, and when I entered and found the occupants (two other women), talking to each other by the light of a pile of blazing corn-stalks, it looked absolutely cheerful. I stretched myself out on one of the angarebs, and soon relapsed into a better humor. But I am afraid we were not lodged in the most respectable house of Handak, for the women showed no disposition to leave, when we made preparations for sleeping. They paid no attention to my requests, except by some words of endearment, which, from such creatures, were sufficiently disgusting, and I was obliged to threaten them with forcible ejection, before they vacated the house. The camel-men informed me that the place is notorious for its harlotry.

As we had made a forced march of forty miles in one day, I gave the caravan a rest until noon, and treated the men to mutton and mareesa. Prices had already increased, since leaving Soudân, and I could not procure a sheep for less than seventeen piastres. The women, who had returned at sunrise, begged me to give them the entrails, which they cut into pieces and ate raw, with the addition of some onions and salt. The old woman told me a piteous tale of the death of her son, and her own distress, and how King Dyaab (who had passed through Handak the day previous, on his way to Dar El-Màhass) had given her two piastres, and she hoped I would also give her something, that she might buy a new dress. I gave her the same as King Dyaab, which she at once asked me to take back again, as she expected at least nine piastres. Seeing I was about to take her at her word, she made haste to secure the money. Her youngest daughter, a bold, masculine thing, with hair cut close to her head, now came to me for backsheesh. “Oh!” said I, “you are going to do as the old woman did, are you?” “No,” she exclaimed; “if you will give me two piastres, I will ask for no more. The old woman is a miserable wretch!” and she spat upon the ground to show her disgust. “Go!” I said; “I shall give nothing to a girl who insults her mother.”

From Handak to El Ordee is two days’ journey. The country presents the same aspect of desertion and ruin as that in the neighborhood of Old Dongola. Untenanted villages line the road during nearly the whole distance. The face of the country is level, and there is no mountain to be seen on either bank of the Nile. It is a melancholy, deserted region, showing only palms growing wildly and rankly along the river, fields covered with halfeh, water-courses broken down, sakias dismantled, and everywhere dwellings in ruin. Here and there a few inhabitants still lingered, tending their fields of stunted cotton, or watering some patches of green wheat. The general aspect of desolation was heightened by the strong north-wind, which filled the air with clouds of sand, making the sunshine so cold and white, that all the color faded out of the landscape. The palms were dull and dark, and the sand-hills beyond the Nile a dead, lifeless yellow. All this district swarms with black gnats, which seemed to have been sent as a curse upon its desertion, for they never appeared where the country was thickly inhabited and all the soil cultivated.

On the first day after leaving Handak, we passed the villages of Kiar, Sori and Urub, and stopped at a place called Tetti. The wind blew so violently during the night that every thing in my tent, my head included, was thickly covered with dust. The next day we passed a large town called Hannak. The greater part of it was levelled to the earth, and evidently by violence, for the walls were of stone. It stood on a rocky rise, near the river, and had on its highest part the remains of some defences, and a small palace, in tolerable preservation. The hills behind were covered for half a mile with the graves of the former inhabitants, among which I noticed the cones and pyramids of several holy men. As we approached El Ordee (by which name New Dongola is usually called), the appearance of the country improved, although there was still as much deserted as cultivated land. The people we met were partly Dongolese and partly Arabs from the Desert, the latter with bushy hair, shining with grease, and spears in their hands. They cheered us with the news that El Ordee was not distant, and we would arrive there at asser—the time of afternoon prayer, two hours before sunset. My camel-men rejoiced at the prospect of again having mareesa to drink, and I asked old Mohammed if he supposed the saints drank mareesa in Paradise. “Why!” he joyfully exclaimed; “do you know about Paradise?” “Certainly;” said I, “if you lead a good life, you will go straight there, but if you are wicked, Eblis will carry you down into the flames.” “Wallah!” said the old fellow, aside to Achmet; “but this is a good Frank. He certainly has Islam in his heart.”

About two o’clock, we descried the minaret of El Ordee, its sugar-loaf top glittering white in the sun. The place was three or four miles distant, and we did not reach it until after more than an hour’s travel. As we approached, it presented the usual appearance of the Nubian towns—a long line of blank mud walls, above which rise, perhaps, the second stories of a few more ambitious mud houses; here a sycamore, there a palm or two, denoting a garden within; a wide waste of sand round about, some filthy people basking in the sun, and a multitude of the vilest kind of dogs. Near the river there are some fine large gardens, as in Khartoum. I had already decided to stop two days, to rest my caravan, before commencing the long and toilsome march to Wadi-Halfa, but instead of hiring a house I went around the town and pitched my tent on the northern side, on a sandy plain, where I secured pure air and freedom from molestation by the inhabitants.

The morning after my arrival, the Governor, Khoorshid Bey, called at my tent, and I returned the visit in the afternoon. He was a stout, fair-skinned and brown-bearded man of thirty-eight, and looked more like an American than a Turk. I found him in the shop of a Turkish merchant, opposite the door of the mosque, which is built in the centre of the bazaar. Two soldiers were in attendance, and brought me coffee and sherbet. The Bey was particularly anxious to know whether the railroad from Alexandria to Cairo would be built, and how much it would cost. While I was sitting with him, the mollahs were chanting in the mosque opposite, as it was the Moslem Sunday, and groups of natives were flocking thither to say their prayers. Presently the voice of the muezzin was heard from the top of the minaret, chanting in a loud, melodious, melancholy cadence the call to prayer—a singular cry, the effect of which, especially at sunset, is really poetic and suggestive. I took my leave, as the Bey was expected to perform his devotions with the other worshippers.

The town may be seen in an hour. It contains no sights, except the bazaar, which has about twenty tolerable shops, principally stocked with cottons and calicoes, and a great quantity of white shawls with crimson borders, which the people here are fond of wearing over their shoulders. Outside the bazaar, which has a roof of palm-logs covered with matting, are a few shops, containing spices, tobacco, beads, trinkets and the like small articles. Beyond this was the soog, where the people came with their coarse tobacco, baskets of raw cotton, onions, palm-mats, gourds, dates, faggots of fire-wood, sheep and fowls. In this market-place, which ascended and descended with the dirt-heaps left from ruined houses, there were four ostriches, which walked about, completely naturalized to the place. One of them was more than eight feet high—a most powerful and graceful creature. They were not out of place, among the groups of wild-haired Kababish and Bishàree, who frequented the market.

Below the river-bank, which is high, upwards of twenty small trading craft were lying. One had just arrived with a load of lime, which the naked sailors were carrying up the bank in baskets, on their heads. The channel of the Nile here is mainly taken up with the large, sandy island of Tor, and the stream is very narrow. The shore was crowded with women, washing clothes or filling their water-jars, men hoisting full water-skins on the backs of donkeys, and boys of all shades, from whity-yellow to perfect black, bathing and playing on the brink. The northern part of the town appeared to be deserted, and several spacious two-story buildings were falling into ruins. I noticed not more than half a dozen houses which would be considered handsome in Berber or Khartoum. El Ordee ranks next after those places, in all the Egyptian territory beyond Assouan, but has the disadvantage of being more filthy than they.