CHAP. VII.
Arrival at Beyla—Friendly Reception there, and after, amongst
the Nuba—Arrival at Sennaar.
When we got a few miles into the plain, my servant delivered me a message from the Moullah, that he would join us the next day at Beyla; that we were not to trust to the king's servant in any thing, but entirely to that of the Shekh Adelan; and if these two had any dispute together, to take no share in it, but leave them to settle it between themselves; that, upon no account whatever, we should suffer any companions to join us upon the road to Beyla, but drive them off by harsh words, beat them if they did not go away, and, if they still persisted, to shoot them, and make our way good by force; that between Teawa and Beyla was a place, the inhabitants of which had withdrawn themselves from their allegiance to the king of Sennaar, who could not there protect us; therefore we were to trust to ourselves, and admit of no parley; for if we passed, we should pass with applause, as if the king's force had conducted us; and if we miscarried, the blame would be laid upon ourselves, as having ventured, so thinly attended, through a country laid waste by rebel Arabs, expressly in defiance of government. He added, that he did not believe it was in Shekh Fidele's power, from want of time, to do us any injury upon the road; that the people in Teawa were in general well-affected to us, and afraid we should bring Yasine and the Daveina upon them, and so were the Jehaina; and as for the pack of graceless soldiers that were then about the Shekh, their belief that we had really no money with us, and the last exhibition I had shewn them on horseback, had perfectly cured them of venturing their lives for little, against people so much superior to them in the management of arms; yet he wished us to be active and vigilant like men, and trust in nothing till we had seen the Shekh of Beyla, and not to lose a moment on the road.
Our journey, for the first seven hours, was through a barren, bare, and sandy plain, without finding a vestige of any living creature, without water, and without grass, a country that seemed under the immediate curse of Heaven. At twelve o'clock at night we turned a little to the eastward of south, to enter through very broken ground into a narrow defile, between two hills of no considerable height. This pass is called Mattina. One of our camel-drivers declared that he saw two men run into the bushes before him, upon which our people took all to their slings, throwing many stones before them into the bushes, directed nearly to a man's height. At their earnest desire I ordered Ismael to fire our large ship-blunderbuss, with fifty small bullets in it, among the bushes, in the direction of the road-side; but we neither saw nor heard any thing of those people thereafter, if there really were any, nor did I, at the time, indeed, believe the camel-driver had seen any one but through the medium of his own fears; for the Arabs never attack you till near sun-set, if they are doubtful of their own superiority, or at dawn of day, if they think they have the advantage, that they may have time to pursue you.
We, however, all continued on foot, from four till the grey of the morning of the 19th of April. Indeed, so violent an inclination to sleep had fallen upon me, that I was forced to walk, for fear of breaking my neck by a fall from my camel, till eight o'clock, when we halted in a wood of ebony bushes, growing like the birch tree in many shoots from the old stems, which had been cut down for fear of harbouring the fly, and totally deprived of their leaves afterwards, by the burning of grass, from the same reason. This place is called Abou Jehaarat, and is the limit between the government of Teawa and Beyla. After such a very fatiguing journey, we rested at Abou Jehaarat till the afternoon. The sun was very hot, but fortunately some shepherds caves were dug in the bank, and to these we fled for shelter from the intense heat of the sun, where the ebony trees, though in a very thick wood, could afford us no shade, for the reasons already given.
At three o'clock in the afternoon we set out from Abou Jehaarat, in a direction west, and at eight in the evening we arrived at Beyla. There is no water between Teawa and Beyla. Once, Imgededema, and a number of villages, were supplied with water from wells and had large crops of Indian corn sown about their possessions. The curse of that country, the Arabs Daveina, have destroyed Imgededema, and all the villages about it, filled up their wells, burnt their crops, and exposed all the inhabitants to die by famine.
We found Beyla to be in lat. 13° 42´ 4´´; that is, about eleven miles west of Teawa, and thirty-one and a half miles due south. We were met by Mahomet, the Shekh, at the very entrance of the town. He said, he looked upon us as risen from the dead; that we must be good people, and particularly under the care of Providence, to have escaped the many snares the Shekh of Atbara had laid for us. Mahomet, the Shekh, had provided every sort of refreshment possible for us; and, thinking we could not live without it, he had ordered sugar for us from Sennaar. Honey for the most part hitherto had been its substitute. We had a good comfortable supper; as fine wheat-bread as ever I ate in my life, brought from Sennaar, as also rice; in a word, everything that our kind landlord could contribute to our plentiful and hospitable entertainment.
Our whole company was full of joy, to which the Shekh greatly encouraged them; and if there was an alloy to the happiness, it was the seeing that I did not partake of it. Symptoms of an aguish disorder had been hanging about me for several days, ever since the diarrhœa had left me. I found the greatest repugnance, or nausea, at the smell of warm meat; and, having a violent headach, I insisted upon going to bed supperless, after having drank a quantity of warm water by way of emetic. Being exceedingly tired, I soon fell sound asleep, having first taken some drops of a strong spirituous tincture of the bark which I had prepared at Gondar, resolving, if I found any remission, as I then did, to take several good dozes of the bark in powder on the morrow, beginning at day-break, which I accordingly did with its usual success.
On the 20th of April, a little after the dawn of day, the Shekh, in great anxiety, came to the place where I was lying, upon a tanned buffaloe's hide, on the ground. His sorrow was soon turned into joy when he found me quite recovered from my illness. I had taken the bark, and expressed a desire of eating a hearty breakfast of rice, which was immediately prepared for me.
The Shekh of Beyla was an implicit believer in medicine. Seeing me take some drops of the tincture before coffee, he insisted upon pledging me, and I believe would have willingly emptied the whole bottle. After having suffered great agony with his own complaint, he had passed some small stones, and was greatly better, as he said, for the soap-pills. I put him in a way to prepare these, as also his lime-water. It was impossible to have done any favour for him equal to this, as his agony had been so great. He told me our Moullah was arrived from Teawa, and had left Shekh Fidele still repining at our departure, without leaving him the piastres. As for the eclipse, he said he did not care a straw, nor for what they did or knew at Mecca, for he had no interest there. I understood our friend Mahomet, Shekh of Beyla, had been under great uneasiness at the eclipse, when it advanced in the immersion, and became total. Some time before this, as he said, there had been another, but not so great, on the day the Daveina burnt Imgededema, with above thirty other villages, and dispersed or destroyed about two thousand inhabitants of Atbara.
It was now the time to give the Shekh a present, and I had prepared one for him, such as he very well deserved; but no intreaty, nor any means I could use, could prevail upon him to accept of the merest trifle. On the contrary, he solemnly swore, that if I importuned him further he would get upon his horse and go into the country. All that he desired, and that too as a favour, was, that, when I had rested at Sennaar, he might come and consult me further as to his complaints, for which he promised he should bring a recompence with him. We then settled to give his present to the Moullah, with which he was very well pleased, and which he took without any of those difficulties the Shekh of Beyla had started when it was offered to him.
All being friends now, and contented, the day was given to repose and joy. The king's servant came and told me, by way of secret, that we could not do less to please the Shekh than stay with him a week at Beyla, and I believe it would not have displeased him; but after so much coming and going, so much occasion for talk relative to me, I was resolved to follow Hagi Belal's advice, and press on to Sennaar before affairs there were in a desperate situation, or some scheme of mischief should be contrived by Fidele. One thing Shekh Adelan's servant told us, that he had, by his master's orders, taken from Fidele the present I had given him, though he had already made it up into a gown, or robe, for himself. "He is a poor wretch, says the Shekh of Beyla; he has spent two years of the king's revenues from Atbara, and nobody has supported him except Shekh Adelan, whose daughter he married, but he now has given him up since he has fully known him; and, if our troubles do not follow quickly, I suppose one of these days I shall have him here in his way to Sennaar, never to return; for everybody knows now that it was in hatred to him, and for the many faithless and bad actions he was guilty of, that the Arabs have destroyed all that part of the country, though they have not burnt a straw about Beyla."
We had again a large and plentiful dinner, and a quantity of bouza; venison of several different species of the antelope or deer-kind, and Guinea-fowls, boiled with rice, the best part of our fare, for the venison smelled and tasted strongly of musk. This was the provision made by the Shekh's two sons, boys about fourteen or fifteen years old, who had got each of them a gun with a match-lock and whose favour I secured to a very high degree, by giving them some good gunpowder, and plenty of small leaden bullets.
In the afternoon we walked out to see the village, which is a very pleasant one, situated upon the bottom of a hill, covered with wood, all the rest flat before it. Through this plain there are many large timber trees, planted in rows, and joined with high hedges, as in Europe, forming inclosures for keeping cattle; but of these we saw none, as they had been moved to the Dender for fear of the flies. There is no water at Beyla but what is got from deep wells. Large plantations of Indian corn are everywhere about the town. The inhabitants are in continual apprehension from the Arabs Daveina at Sim Sim, about 40 miles south-east from them; and from another powerful race called Wed abd el Gin, i. e. Son of the slaves of the Devil, who live to the south-west of them, between the Dender and the Nile. Beyla is another frontier town of Sennaar, on the side of Sim Sim; and between Teawa and this, on the Sennaar side, and Ras el Feel, Nara, and Tchelga, upon the Abyssinian side, all is desert and waste, the Arabs only suffering the water to remain there without villages near it, that they and their flocks may come at certain seasons while the grass grows, and the pools or springs fill elsewhere.
Although I went early to bed with full determination to set out by day-break, yet I found it was impossible to put my design in execution, or get from the hands of our kind landlord. One of our girbas seemed to fail, and needed to be repaired. Nothing good, as he truly said, could come from the Shekh of Atbara. A violent dispute had arisen in the evening, after I was gone to bed, over their bouza, between the king's servant and that of Shekh Adelan. It was about dividing their fees which they had received from Shekh Fidele. This was carried a great length, and it was at last agreed that it should be determined by the Shekh of Beyla in the morning, when both of them, as might be supposed, should have cooler heads. For my part, I took no thought or concern about it, as no circumstance of its origin had been notified to me; but it took up so much of our time, that it was after dinner before we were ready.
On the 21st of April we left Beyla at three o'clock in the afternoon, our direction south-west, through a very pleasant, flat country, but without water; there had been none in our way nearer than the river Rahad. About eleven at night we alighted in a wood: The place is called Baherie, as near as we could compute, nine miles from Beyla.
On the 22d, at half past five o'clock in the morning we left Baherie, still continuing westward, and at nine we came to the banks of the Rahad. The ford is called Tchir Chaira. The river itself was now standing in pools, the water foul, stinking, and covered with a green mantle; the bottom soft and muddy, but there was no choice. The water at Beyla was so bad, that we took only as much as was absolutely necessary till we arrived at running water from the Rahad. We continued half an hour travelling along the river at N. W. and W. N. W. till three quarters past ten. At noon we again met the river Rahad, which now had turned to the westward of north, and by its sides we pitched our tents near the huts of the Arabs, called Cohala, a stationary tribe, that do not live in tents, but are tributary to the Mek, and regularly pay all the taxes and exactions the government of Sennaar lays upon them, and from these, therefore, we were not under any apprehension.
On the 23d, at six o'clock in the morning we left the Cohala, continuing along the river Rahad, which here runs a very little to the eastward of north. At three o'clock we alighted at Kumar, another station of the same Arabs of Cohala, on the river side. This river, here called Rahad, or Thunder, winds the most of any stream in Abyssinia. It begins not far from Tchelga, passes between Kuara and Sennaar, separating Abyssinia from Nubia, and making, with the river Atbara, the Astaboras or Tacazzé, and the Nile, a perfect island, whereas before it was only a peninsula. It seems to intercept all the springs that would go down to the middle of the peninsula, from the high country of Abyssinia, and is probably the reason of the great dearth of water there. While it is in Abyssinia it is called Shimfa. It falls into the Nile at Habharras, about thirty-eight miles north of Sennaar.
The quarrel between our two conductors was so little made up, that the king's servant would not travel with us, but always went half a day before, and we joined him when we encamped in the evening. We did not pay him the compliment of asking him why he did this, but allowed him to take his own way, which he seemed not to be pleased with, giving many hints at night, that he had, all his life, been averse to the having any thing to do with white people.
We set out at five in the afternoon from Kumar, and in the close of the evening met several men, on horseback and on foot, coming out from among the bushes, who endeavoured to carry off one of our camels. We indeed were somewhat alarmed, and were going to prepare for resistance. The camel they had taken away had on it the king's and Shekh Adelan's presents, and some other things for our future need. Our clothes too, books, and papers, were upon the same camel. Adelan's servant, though he was at first surprised, did not lose his presence of mind; he soon knew these Arabs could not be robbers, and guessed it to be a piece of malice of the king's servant to frighten us, and extort money from us, in order to obtain restitution of the camel. He therefore rode up to one of the villages of the Arabs, to ask them who those were that had taken away our camel.
In one of the huts he found the king's servant regaling himself; upon which he said to him, "I suppose, Mahomet, you have taken charge of that camel, and will bring it with you to Sennaar; it has your master's presents, and mine also, upon it:" and saying this, he rode off to join us, and to punish those that had taken the camel, who, we were sure after this notification, must follow us. We kept on at a very brisk pace, for it was eleven o'clock before they came up to where we were encamped for the night, bringing our camel, which they had taken, along with them, with an Arab on horseback, attended with two on foot, and with them the king's servant. I did not seem at all to have understood the affair, only that robbers had taken away our camel. But it did not sit so easy upon the Arabs, who did not know there was any with us but the king's servant, and who wanted to frighten us for not making them a present for eating their grass and drinking their water. At first, Adelan's servant refused to take the camel again upon any terms, insisting that the Cohala should carry it to Sennaar; but, after a great many words, I determined to make peace, upon condition they should furnish us with milk, wherever they had cattle, till we arrived at Sennaar. This was very readily consented to; and as this affair probably was owing to the malice of the king's servant, so it ended without further trouble.
On the 24th, we set out at half after five in the morning, and passed through several small villages of Cohala on the right and on the left, till at eleven we came to the river Dender, standing now in pools, but by the vast wideness of its banks, and the great deepness of its bed, all of white sand, it should seem that in time of rain it will contain nearly as much water as the Nile. The banks are everywhere thick overgrown with the rack and jujeb tree, especially the latter. The wood, which had continued mostly from Beyla, here failed us entirely, and reached no further towards Sennaar. These two sorts of trees, however, were in very great beauty, and of a prodigious size. Here we found the main body of Cohala, with all their cattle, living in perfect security both from Arabs and from the plague of the fly. They were as good as their word to us in supplying us plentifully with excellent milk, which we had scarcely ever tasted since we left Gondar.
At six o'clock in the evening of the 24th we set out from a shady place of repose on the banks of the Dender, through a large plain, with not a tree before us; but we presently found ourselves encompassed with a number of villages, nearly of a size, and placed at equal distances in form of a semi-circle, the roofs of the houses in shape of cones, as are all those within the rains. The plain was all of a red, soapy earth, and the corn just sown. This whole country is in perpetual cultivation, and though at this time it had a bare look, would no doubt have a magnificent one when waving with grain. At nine we halted at a village of Pagan Nuba. These are all soldiers of the Mek of Sennaar, cantoned in these villages, which, at the distance of four or five miles, surround the whole capital. They are either purchased or taken by force from Fazuclo, and the provinces to the south upon the mountains Dyre and Tegla. Having settlements and provisions given them, as also arms put in their hands, they never wish to desert, but live a very domestic and sober life. Many of them that I have conversed with seem a much gentler sort of negro than those from Bahar el Aice, that is, than those of whom the Funge, or government of Sennaar, are composed.
These have small features likewise, but are woolly-headed, and flat-nosed, like other negroes, and speak a language rather pleasant and sonorous, but radically different from many I have heard. Though the Mek, and their masters at Sennaar, pretend to be Mahometans, yet they have never attempted to convert these Nuba; on the contrary, they entertain, in every village, a certain number of Pagan priests, who have soldiers pay, and assist them in the offices of their religion. Not knowing their language perfectly, nor their customs, it is impossible to say any thing about their religion. Very few of the common sort of them speak Arabic. A false account, in these cases, is always worse than no account at all. I never found one of their priests who could speak so much Arabic as to be able to give any information about the objects of their worship in distinct and unequivocal terms; but this was from my not understanding them, and their not understanding me, not from any desire of concealment, or shyness on their part; on the contrary, they seemed always inclined to agree with me, when they did not comprehend my meaning, and there is the danger of being misinformed.
They pay adoration to the moon; and that their worship is performed with pleasure and satisfaction, is obvious every night that she shines. Coming out from the darkness of their huts, they say a few words upon seeing her brightness, and testify great joy, by motions of their feet and hands, at the first appearance of the new moon. I never saw them pay any attention to the sun, either rising or setting, advancing to or receding from the meridian; but, as far as I could learn, they worship a tree, and likewise a stone, tho' I never could find out what tree or stone it was, only that it did not exist in the country of Sennaar, but in that where they were born. Their priests seemed to have great influence over them, but through fear only, and not from affection. They are distinguished by thick copper bracelets about their wrists, as also sometimes one, and sometimes two about their ancles.
These villages are called Dahera, which seems to me to be the same word as Dashrah, the name given to the Kabyles, or people in Barbary, who live in fixed huts on the mountains. But not having made myself master enough of the Kabyles language when in Barbary, and being totally ignorant of that of the Nuba we are now speaking of, I cannot pretend to pursue this resemblance farther. They are immoderately fond of swine's flesh, and maintain great herds of them in their possession. The hogs are of a small kind, generally marked with black and white, exceedingly prolific, and exactly resembling a species of that kind common in the north of Scotland. The Nuba are not circumcised. They very rarely turn Mahometans, but the generality of their children do. Few of them advance higher than to be soldiers and officers in their own corps. The Mek maintains about twelve thousand of these near Sennaar, to keep the Arabs in subjection. They are very quiet, and scarcely ever known to be guilty of any robberies or mutinous disorders, declaring always for the master, that is, the great one set over them. There is no running water in all that immense plain they inhabit, it is all procured from draw-wells. We saw them cleaning one, which I measured, and was nearly eight fathoms deep. In a climate so violently hot as this, there is very little need of fuel, neither have they any, there being no turf, or any thing resembling it, in the country, no wood, not even a tree, since we had passed the river Dender. However, they never eat their meat raw as in Abyssinia; but with the stalk of the dora, or millet, and the dung of camels, they make ovens under ground, in which they roast their hogs whole, in a very cleanly, and not disagreeable manner, keeping the skins on till they are perfectly baked. They had neither flint nor steel wherewith to light their fire at first, but do it in a manner still more expeditious, by taking a small piece of stick, and making a sharp point to it, which they hold perpendicular, and then make a small hole of nearly the same size in another piece of stick, which they lay horizontal; they put the one within the other, and, between their two hands, they turn the perpendicular stick, (in the same manner that we do a chocolate mill) when both these sticks take fire, and flame in a moment upon the friction; so perfectly dry and prepared is everything here upon the surface to take fire, notwithstanding they are every year subject to six months rain.
On the 25th, at four o'clock in the afternoon we set out from the villages of the Nuba, intending to arrive at Basboch, where is the ferry over the Nile; but we had scarcely advanced two miles into the plain, when we were inclosed by a violent whirlwind, or what is called at sea the water-spout. The plain was red earth, which had been plentifully moistened by a shower in the night-time. The unfortunate camel that had been taken by the Cohala seemed to be nearly in the center of its vortex. It was lifted and thrown down at a considerable distance, and several of its ribs broken. Although, as far as I could guess, I was not near the center, it whirled me off my feet, and threw me down upon my face, so as to make my nose gush out with blood. Two of the servants likewise had the same fate. It plaistered us all over with mud, almost as smoothly as could have been done with a trowel. It took away my sense and breathing for an instant, and my mouth and nose were full of mud when I recovered. I guess the sphere of its action to be about 200 feet. It demolished one half of a small hut as if it had been cut through with a knife, and dispersed the materials all over the plain, leaving the other half standing.
As soon as we recovered ourselves, we took refuge in a village, from fear only, for we saw no vestige of any other whirlwind. It involved a great quantity of rain, which the Nuba of the villages told us was very fortunate, and portended good luck to us, and a prosperous journey; for they said, that had dust and sand arisen with the whirlwind, in the same proportion it would have done had not the earth been moistened, we should all infallibly have been suffocated; and they cautioned us, by saying, that tempests were very frequent in the beginning and end of the rainy season, and whenever we should see one of them coming, to fall down upon our faces, keeping our lips close to the ground, and so let it pass; and thus it would neither have power to carry us off our feet, nor suffocate us, which was the ordinary case.
Our kind landlords, the Nuba, gave us a hearty welcome, and helped us to wash our clothes first, and then to dry them. When I was stripped naked, they saw the blood running from my nose, and said, they could not have thought that one so white as me could have been capable of bleeding. They gave us a piece of roasted hog, which we ate, (except Ismael and the Mahometans) very much to the satisfaction of the Nuba. On the other hand, as our camel was lame, we ordered one of our Mahometan servants to kill it, and take as much of it as would serve themselves that night; we also provided against wanting ourselves the next day. The rest we gave among our new-acquired acquaintance, the Nuba of the village, who did not fail to make a feast upon it for several days after; and, in recompence for our liberality, they provided us with a large jar of bouza, not very good, indeed, but better than the well-water. This I repaid by tobacco, beads, pepper, and stibium, which I saw plainly was infinitely more than they expected. Although we had been a good deal surprised at the sudden and violent effects of the whirlwind of that day, and severely felt the bruises it had occasioned, yet we passed a very social and agreeable evening; those only of the Nuba who had been any time at Sennaar speak a bad kind of Arabic, as well as their own language. I had seldom, in my life, upon a journey, passed a more comfortable night. I had a very neat, clean hut, entirely to myself, and a Greek servant that sat near me. Some of the Nuba watched for us all night, and took care of our beasts and baggage. They sung and replied to one another alternately, in notes full of pleasant melody,
till I fell fast asleep, involuntarily, and with regret, for, tho' bruised, we were not fatigued, but rather discouraged, having gone no further than two miles that day.
The landlord of the hut where I was asleep having prepared for our safety and that of our baggage, thought himself bound in duty to go and give immediate information to the prime minister of the unexpected guests that then occupied his house. He found Adelan at supper, but was immediately admitted, and a variety of questions asked him, which he answered fully. He described our colour, our number, the unusual size and number of our fire-arms, the poorness of our attire, and, above all, our great chearfulness, quietness, and affability, our being contented with eating any thing, and in particular mentioned the hogs flesh. One man then present, testifying abhorrence to this, Adelan said of me to our landlord, "Why, he is a soldier and a Kafr like yourself. A soldier and a Kafr, when travelling in a strange country, should eat every thing, and so does every other man that is wise; has he not a servant of mine with him?" He answered, "Yes, and a servant of the king too; but he had left them, and was gone forward to Sennaar." "Go you with them, says he, and stay with them at Basboch till I have time to send for them to town." He had returned from Aira long before we arose, and told us the conversation, which was great comfort to us all, for we were not much pleased with the king's servant going before, as we had every reason to think he was disaffected towards us.
On the 26th, at six o'clock in the morning, we set out from this village of Nuba, keeping something to the westward of S. W. our way being still across this immense plain. All the morning there were terrible storms of thunder and lightning, some rain, and one shower of so large drops that it wet us to the skin in an instant. It was quite calm, and every drop fell perpendicularly upon us. I think I never in my life felt so cold a rain, yet it was not disagreeable; for the day was close and hot, and we should have wished every now and then to have had so moderate a refrigeration; this, however, was rather too abundant. The villages of the Nuba were, on all sides, throughout this plain. At nine o'clock we arrived at Basboch, which is a large collection of huts of these people, and has the appearance of a town.
The governor, a venerable old man of about seventy, who was so feeble that he could scarcely walk, received us with great complacency, only saying, when I took him by the hand, "O Christian! what dost thou, at such a time, in such a country?" I was surprised at the politeness of his speech, when he called me Nazarani, the civil term for Christian in the east; whereas Infidel is the general term among these brutish people; but it seems he had been several times at Cairo. I had here a very clean and comfortable hut to lodge in, though we were sparingly supplied with provisions all the time we were there, but never were suffered to fast a whole day together.
Basboch is on the eastern bank of the Nile, not a quarter of a mile from the ford below. The river here runs north and south; towards the sides it is shallow, but deep in the middle of the current, and in this part it is much infested with crocodiles. Sennaar is two miles and a half S. S. W. of it. We heard the evening drum very distinctly, and not without anxiety, when we reflected to what a brutish people, according to all accounts, we were about to trust ourselves. The village of Aira, where the vizir Adelan had then his quarters, was three miles south and by west.
Next morning, the 27th, Shekh Adelan's servant left us to the charge of the Nuba, to give his master an account of his journey, and our safe arrival. He found Mahomet, the king's servant, our other guide, before him there, and Adelan well informed of all that had passed relating to Fidele, though not from Mahomet; for as soon as he began to mention that he had found us at Teawa, Adelan said in a very angry stile, "Will no one save me the disgrace of hanging that wretch?" Adelan sent back his servant to inform us, that, two days afterwards, we should be admitted. Mahomet, the king's servant, too, came back with him, and staid till the evening; then he returned to Sennaar; but he did not give us the satisfaction to tell us one word of what the king had said to him about us, or how we were likely to be received, leaving us altogether in suspence.
On the 29th, leave was sent us to enter Sennaar. It was not without some difficulty that we got our quadrant and heavy baggage safely carried down the hill, for the banks are very steep to the edge of the water. The intention of our assistants was to slide the quadrant down the hill, in its case, which would have utterly destroyed it; and as our boat was but a very indifferent embarkation, it was obliged to make several turns to and fro before we got all our several packages landed on the western side. This assemblage, and the passage of our camels, seemed to have excited the appetite, or the curiosity, of the crocodiles. One, in particular, swam several times backwards and forwards along the side of the boat, without, however, making any attack upon any of us; but, being exceedingly tired of such company, upon his second or third venture over, I fired at him with a rifle-gun, and shot him directly under his fore shoulder in the belly. The wound was undoubtedly mortal, and very few animals could have lived a moment after receiving it. He, however, dived to the bottom, leaving the water deeply tinged with his blood. Nor did we see him again at that time; but the people at the ferry brought him to me the day after, having found him perfectly dead. He was about twelve feet long; and the boatmen told me that these are by much the most dangerous, being more fierce and active than the large ones. The people of Sennaar eat the crocodile, especially the Nuba. I never tasted it myself, but it looks very much like Congor eel.