CHAPTER XXXII.THE BEYOODA DESERT.Entering the Desert—Character of the Scenery—Wells—Fear of the Arabs—The Laloom Tree—Effect of the Hot Wind—Mohammed overtakes us—Arab Endurance—An unpleasant Bedfellow—Comedy of the Crows—Gazelles—We encounter a Sand-storm—The Mountain of Thirst—The Wells of Djeekdud—A Mountain Pass—Desert Intoxication—Scenery of the Table-land—Bir Khannik—The Kababish Arabs—Gazelles again—Ruins of an Ancient Coptic Monastery—Distant View of the Nile Valley—Djebel Berkel—We come into Port.
Entering the Desert—Character of the Scenery—Wells—Fear of the Arabs—The Laloom Tree—Effect of the Hot Wind—Mohammed overtakes us—Arab Endurance—An unpleasant Bedfellow—Comedy of the Crows—Gazelles—We encounter a Sand-storm—The Mountain of Thirst—The Wells of Djeekdud—A Mountain Pass—Desert Intoxication—Scenery of the Table-land—Bir Khannik—The Kababish Arabs—Gazelles again—Ruins of an Ancient Coptic Monastery—Distant View of the Nile Valley—Djebel Berkel—We come into Port.
“He sees the red sirocco wheelingIts sandy columns o’er the waste,And streams through palmy valleys stealing,Where the plumed ostrich speeds in haste.”—Freiligrath.
“He sees the red sirocco wheelingIts sandy columns o’er the waste,And streams through palmy valleys stealing,Where the plumed ostrich speeds in haste.”—Freiligrath.
“He sees the red sirocco wheelingIts sandy columns o’er the waste,And streams through palmy valleys stealing,Where the plumed ostrich speeds in haste.”—Freiligrath.
“He sees the red sirocco wheeling
Its sandy columns o’er the waste,
And streams through palmy valleys stealing,
Where the plumed ostrich speeds in haste.”—Freiligrath.
We left El Metemma at noon, on the tenth of February. Crossing the low ridge of red sand, at the foot of which the town is built, the wind came fresh to meet us, across the long, level savanna of yellow grass and shrubs which stretched away to the west and north, without a bound. The prospect was exhilarating, after the continual hem of thorns, which had lined our road from Khartoum. It was a great relief to turn the eye from the bare, scorching mud walls of the town, to the freshness and freedom of the Desert. I took a last look at the wheat-fields of the Nile, and then turned my face northward,towards the point where I expected to meet his current again. The plain was very level, and the road excellent for our camels. In places where there was a slight depression of the soil, a long, slender species of grass grew in thick tufts, affording nourishment to the herds of the wandering Arab tribes. There were also narrow belts of white thorn and a curious shrub, with leaves resembling the jasmine. In two hours we reached a well, where some Kababish were drawing water for their goats and asses. It was about twenty feet deep, and the water was drawn in skins let down with ropes. We kept on until sunset, when we encamped in an open, gravelly space, surrounded with patches of grass, on which the camels browsed. The hot weather of the past two or three days had called into life a multitude of winged and creeping insects, and they assailed me on all sides.
The next morning, after travelling more than two hours over the plain, we reached a series of low hills, or rather swells of the Desert, covered with black gravel and fragments of porphyritic rock. They appeared to be outlying spurs of a mountain range which we saw to the north-west. From the highest of them we saw before us a long, shallow valley, opening far to the north-east. It was thickly covered with tufts of yellowish-green grass, sprinkled with trees of various kinds. The merchant pointed out a grove in the distance as the location of Bir Abou-leer, the first well on the road. His sharp eye discerned a company of Arabs, who were encamped near it, and who, seeing Achmet and myself in our Turkish dresses, were preparing to fly. He urged his dromedary into a fast trot and rode ahead to reassure them. They were a tall, wild-looking people, very scantily dressed; the men had long black hair,moustaches and beards, and carried spears in their hands. They looked at us with suspicion, but did not refuse the customary “hab-bab-ba!” The wells were merely pits, not more than four or five feet deep, dug in the clayey soil, and containing at the bottom a constant supply of cool, sweet water. We watered our camels in basins scooped for that purpose in the earth, and then took breakfast under the thorns. Among the trees in the wady was one resembling the nebbuk in foliage, and with a fruit similar in appearance, but larger and of different flavor. The Arabs called itlaloom, and gathered some of the fruit for me to taste. It has a thin, brittle outer rind, containing a hard stone, covered with a layer of gummy paste, most intensely sweet and bitter in the mouth. It has precisely the flavor of the medicine known to children as Hive Syrup.
We resumed our course along the wady, nearly to its termination at the foot of the mountains, when the road turned to the right over another succession of hard, gravelly ridges, flanked on the west by hills of coal-black porphyry. During the afternoon the wind was sometimes as hot as a furnace-blast, and I felt my very blood drying up in its intensity. I had no means of ascertaining the temperature, but it could not have been less than 105°. Nevertheless, the sky was so clear and blue, the sunshine so perfect, and the Desert so inspiring that I was in the most exulting mood. In fact, the powerful dry heat of the air produced upon me a bracing effect, similar to that of sharp cold. It gave me a sensation of fierce, savage vigor, and I longed for an Arab lance and the fleet hoofs of the red stallion I had left in Khartoum. At times the burning blasts were flavored with a strong aromatic odor, like that of dried lavender, which was as stimulating to the lungs asherb-tea to the stomach. Our provisions soon felt the effects of this continual dry heat. Dates became as pebbles of jasper, and when I asked my servant for bread, he gave me a stone.
As we were journeying along over the plain, we spied a man on a camel trotting behind us, and in half an hour, lo! Mohammed the guide. The old scamp came up with a younger brother behind him, whom he had brought without asking permission, and without bringing food for him. This made eight persons I was obliged to feed, and as our bread and meat were only calculated for six, I put them on allowance. Mohammed had his hair newly plaited and covered with a layer of mutton-fat, a quarter of an inch thick. I saw very little of the vaunted temperance of the Arabs. True, they will live on dates—when they can get nothing else; and they will go without water for a day—when they have none. I found a quart of water daily amply sufficient for my own needs, notwithstanding the great heat we endured; but I do not think one of the men drank less than a gallon in the same time, and as for their eating, Achmet frequently declared that they would finish a whole sheep before getting to “el hamdu lillàh!”—the usual Arabic grace after meat.
Towards sunset we reached an open space of ground which had not been touched since the rains of the previous summer. The soil had been washed smooth and then dried away in the sun, leaving a thin, cracked crust, like that which frequently forms after a light snow-fall. Our camel’s feet broke through at every step, making the only trails which crossed it, except those of gazelles and vultures. Achmet was about to pitch my tent near some snaky-looking holes, but I had it moved to a clearer spot. I slept without interruption, but in the morning,as he was about to roll up my mattrass, he suddenly let it drop and rushed out of the tent, exclaiming: “Oh master, come out! come out! There is a great snake in your bed!” I looked, and truly enough, there was an ugly spotted reptile coiled up on the straw matting. The men heard the alarm, and my servant Ali immediately came running up with a club. As he was afraid to enter the tent, he threw it to me, and with one blow I put the snake beyond the power of doing harm. It was not more than two feet long, but thick and club-shaped, and with a back covered with green, brown and yellow scales, very hard and bright. The Arabs, who by this time had come to the rescue, said it was a most venomous creature, its bite causing instant death. “Allah kereem!” (God is merciful!) I exclaimed, and they all heartily responded: “God be praised!” They said that the occurrence denoted long life to me. Although no birds were to be seen at the time, not ten minutes had elapsed before two large crows appeared in the air. After wheeling over us once or twice, they alighted near the snake. At first, they walked around it at a distance, occasionally exchanging glances, and turning up their heads in a shrewd manner, which plainly said: “No you don’t, old fellow! want to make us believe you’re dead, do you?” They bantered each other to take hold of it first, and at last the boldest seized it suddenly by the tail, jumped backward two or three feet and then let it fall. He looked at the other, as much as to say: “If he’s not dead, it’s a capital sham!” The other made a similar essay, after which they alternately dragged and shook it, and consulted some time, before they agreed that it was actually dead. One of them then took it by the tail and sailed off through the air, its scales glittering in the sun as it dangled downward.
On the third day we left the plain and entered on a region of black, stony ridges, with grass and thorns in the long hollows between them. The sky was so clear that the moon (in her last quarter) was visible until nearly noon. About ten o’clock, from one of the porphyry hills, I caught sight of Djebel Attshàn, or the Mountain of Thirst, which crosses the middle of the Beyooda. It was in the north and north-west, apparently about thirty miles distant. During the morning I saw four beautiful gazelles, not more than a stone’s throw distant. One of them was lame, which induced me to believe that I could catch it. I got down from my camel and crept stealthily to the crest of the ridge, but when I looked down the other side, no gazelle was to be seen. Half a dozen narrow gullies branched away among the loose mounds of stones, and further search would have been useless.
At noon we reached another and different region. The grass and thorns disappeared, and the swells of black gravel gave place to long drifts of bright yellow sand which extended on all sides as far as the eye could reach. We toiled on, over drift after drift, but there was still the same dreary yellow waste, whitening in the distance under the glare of the sun. At first, the air was so tremulous with the radiated heat, that the whole landscape glittered and wavered like the sea, and the brain became giddy from gazing on its unsteady lines. But as the wind began to blow more violently, this disappeared. The sky then became obscured nearly to the zenith, with a dull purple haze, arising from the myriads of fine grains of sand with which the air was filled. The sun became invisible, although there were no clouds in the sky, and we seemed to be journeying under a firmament of rusty copper. The driftswere constantly forming and changing shape, and the sand vibrated along their edges or scudded in swift ripples over the plain, with that dry, sharp sound one hears in winter, when the “North-wind’s masonry” is going on. The air was withering in its fierce heat and occasioned intense thirst, which, fortunately, we were able to relieve. The storm grew more violent and the burning labyrinths of sand more intricate, as we advanced. The path was hidden under drifts five or six feet in height, and the tall yellow walls were creeping every minute nearer, to cover it completely. The piles of stones, however, which the Arabs have made on the tops of the ridges and replace as often as they are thrown down, guided us, and after three hours and a half in a spot which might serve as the fourth circle of Dante’s Hell, we emerged on the open plain and saw again the Mountain of Thirst, which had been hidden all this time. The camels, which were restless and uneasy in the sand, now walked more cheerily. The sun came out again, but the sky still retained its lurid purple hue. We all drank deeply of the brown leathery contents of our water-skins and pushed steadily onward till camping-time, at sunset. While the storm lasted, the Arabs crouched close under the flanks of the camels and sheltered themselves from the sand. Achmet and the Dongolese merchant unrolled their turbans and muffled them around their faces, but on following their example I experienced such a stifling sensation of heat that I at once desisted, and rode with my head exposed as usual.
We halted in a meadow-like hollow, full of abundant grass, in which the weary camels made amends for their hardships. The wind howled so fiercely around my tent that I went to sleep expecting to have it blown about my ears before morning.Djebel Attshàn was dimly visible in the starlight, and we saw the light of fires kindled by the Arabs who live at the wells of Djeekdud. Saïd was anxious to go on to the wells and have a carouse with the natives, and when I refused threatened to leave me and go on alone to Merawe. “Go!” said I, “just as soon as you like”—but this was the very thing he did not want. The heat which I had absorbed through the day began to ooze out again as the temperature of the air fell, and my body glowed until midnight like a mass of molten metal. On lifting up my blanket, that night, a large scorpion tumbled out, but scampered away so quickly that we could not kill him.
We were up betimes the next morning, and off for Bir Djeekdud. At ten o’clock we entered a wide valley extending to the southern base of the mountains. It was quite overgrown with bushy tufts of grass and scattering clumps of trees. Herds of goats and sheep, with a few camels and donkeys, were browsing over its surface, and I saw the Arab herdsmen at a distance. The wells lie in a narrow wady, shut in by the mountains, about two miles east of the caravan track. We therefore halted in the shade of a spreading mimosa, and sent Saïd and the guide’s brother with the water-skins. I took my breakfast leisurely, and was lying on my back, half lulled to sleep by the singing of the wind, when the Dongolese arrived. He gave us to drink from his fresh supply of water, and informed us that the wells in the valley were not good, but that there was a deposit in the rocks above, which was pure and sweet. I therefore sent Ali off in all haste on one of my dromedaries, to have my skins filled from the latter place, which occasioned a further delay of two hours. An Arabfamily of the small Saūrat tribe, which inhabits that region, was encamped at a little distance, but did not venture to approach.
Ali described the well as a vast natural hollow in the porphyry rock, in the centre of a basin, or valley, near the top of the mountain. The water is held as in a tank; it is from twenty to thirty feet deep, and as clear as crystal. The taste is deliciously pure and fresh. If I had known this in time, I should have visited the place. The valley of Djeekdud is about two miles broad, inclosed on the north by the dark-red porphyry rocks of the Mountain of Thirst, and on the south by a smaller group of similar formation. It is crossed in two places by broad strata of red granite. As water can readily be obtained in any part of it by digging, the whole of it is capable of cultivation.
Leaving our halting place, we journeyed westward through a gate of the mountains into a broader valley, where numerous herds of sheep were feeding. I saw but few Arabs, and those were mostly children, who had charge of the herds. The tribe resides principally in the mountains, on account of greater security against the attacks of enemies. The afternoon was hot like all preceding ones, and my Arabs drank immense quantities of water. We kept on our course until five o’clock, when we encamped opposite a broad valley, which broke into the mountains at right angles to their course. It was a wild spot, and the landscape, barren as it was, possessed much natural beauty. During the afternoon we left the high road to Ambukol, and took a branch track leading to Merawe, which lay more to the northward.
The next morning, after skirting the porphyry range forseveral hours, we entered a narrow valley leading into its depths. The way was stony and rough, and we travelled for three hours, constantly ascending, up the dry bed of a summer stream. The mountains rose a thousand feet above us in some places. Near the entrance of the valley, we passed an Arab watering a large flock of sheep at a pool of green water which lay in a hollow of the rocks. After ascending the pass for nearly four hours, we crossed the summit ridge and entered on a high table-land, eight or ten miles in length and entirely surrounded by branches of the mountain chain. The plain was thinly covered with grass, mimosas and nebbuk, among which a single camel was browsing. At night we reached the opposite side, and encamped at the foot of a lofty black spur of the mountains, not far from a well which Mohammed called Bir Abou-Seray.
During the night I was troubled with a heavy feeling in the head, and found it almost impossible to sleep. I arose with a sensation of giddiness, which continued all day. At times I found it very difficult to maintain my seat on the dromedary. It required a great effort to keep my eyes open, as the sunshine increased the symptoms. This condition affected my mind in a singular manner. Past scenes in my life revived, with so strong an impression of reality, that I no longer knew where I was. The hot, yellow landscape around me, was a dream; the cries of my camel-drivers were fantastic sounds which my imagination had conjured up. After a most bewildering and fatiguing day, I drank several cups of strong tea, rolled myself in a thick cotton quilt, and sweat to distraction until morning. The moisture I lost relieved my head, as a shower clears a sultry sky, and the symptoms gradually leftme. Whether they were caused by breathing a more rarefied atmosphere,—for the plain was nearly fifteen hundred feet above the Nile level—in a heat more than usually intense, or by an attack of that malady which Richardson aptly calls the “intoxication of the Desert,” I cannot decide.
After leaving Bir Abou-Seray, we continued our slow descent of the northern side of the mountain range, by a winding valley, following the dry bed of a summer river. The mountains were a thousand feet high and linked in regular ranges, which had a general north-east and south-west direction. The landscapes of the day were all exceedingly wild and picturesque. The vegetation was abundant along the banks of the river-bed, the doum-palm appearing occasionally among the groves of thorn and nebbuk. In some places the river had washed the bases of the mountains and laid bare their huge strata of rock, whose round black masses glittered in the sunshine, showing the gradual polish of the waves. Towards noon the pass enlarged into a broad plain, six miles in diameter, and entirely bounded by mountains. To the north-east it opened into another and larger plain, across whose blue surface rose the pyramidal peaks of a higher mountain chain than I had yet seen. Some of them were upwards of two thousand feet in height. The scenery here was truly grand and imposing. Beyond the plain we passed into a broader valley, girdled by lower hills. The river-bed, which we crossed from time to time, increased in breadth and showed a more dense vegetation on its banks. We expected to have reached another well, but there was no sign of it at sunset, and as I had already found that my guide, Mohammed, knew nothing of the road, I encamped at once.
We arose by daybreak, hoping to reach the Nile. After somewhat more than two hours’ journey, we met a caravan of about three hundred camels, laden with bales of cotton drillings, for the clothing of the new regiments of soldiers then being raised in Soudân. The foremost camels were a mile from Bir Khannik, while the hindmost were still drinking at the well. The caravan had Kababish drivers and guides—wild, long-haired, half-naked Arabs, with spears in their hands and shields of hippopotamus hide on their shoulders. They told us we were still a day and a half from Merawe. We rode on to the well, which was an immense pit, dug in the open plain. It was about fifty feet deep, and the Arabs were obliged to draw the water in skins let down with ropes. The top curved into the well like a shallow bowl, from the earth continually crumbling down, and the mouth of the shaft was protected by trunks of trees, on which the men stood while they drew the water. Around the top were shallow basins lined with clay, out of which the camels drank. The fierce Kababish were shouting and gesticulating on all sides as we rode up—some leading the camels to kneel and drink, some holding the water-skins, and others brandishing their spears and swords in angry contention. Under the hot sun, on the sandy plain, it was a picture truly mid-African in all its features. The water had an insipid, brackish taste, and I was very glad that I had prevented my Arabs from drinking all we had brought from the porphyry fountain of Djeekdud. We watered our camels, however, which detained us long enough to see a fight between two of the Kababish guides. There were so many persons to interfere that neither could injure the other, but the whole group of actors and sympathizers struggling onthe brink of the well, came near being precipitated to the bottom.
Our road now turned to the north, through a gap in the low hills and over a tract of burnt, barren, rolling wastes of white sand and gravel. Towards evening we came again to the river-bed, here broad and shallow. This part of the Desert is inhabited by the Saūrat and Huni tribes, and we saw large herds of sheep and goats wherever the halfeh grass abounded. At sunset there were no signs of the Nile, so I had the tent pitched in the middle of the dry river-channel. In front of us, on a low mound, the red walls of a ruined building shone in the last rays of the sun.
The next day—the eighth since leaving El Metemma—was intensely hot and sultry, without a breath of air stirring. While walking towards the ruins, I came upon two herds of gazelles, so tame that I approached within thirty yards, and could plainly see the expression of surprise and curiosity in their dark eyes. When I came too near, they would bleat like lambs, bound away a little distance and then stop again. The building, which stood on the stony slope of a hill, was surrounded with loose walls, in a dilapidated condition. The foundation, rising about six feet above the earth, is stone, above which the walls are of brick, covered with a thin coating of cement. The building is about eighty feet in length by forty in breadth, but the walls which remain are not more than twenty feet high. It is believed to have been an ancient Coptic monastery, and probably dates from the earlier ages of Christianity. The ruins of other houses, built of loose stones, surround the principal edifice, which was undoubtedly a church and the ground around is strewn with fragments of burnt brickand pottery. There is a churchyard near at hand, with tombstones which contain inscriptions both in Greek and Coptic.
We rode slowly down the broad river-bed, which gradually widened, and after two or three hours saw far in advance a line of red, glowing sand-hills, which I knew could not be on the southern side of the Nile. Still we went on, under the clear, hot sky, the valley widening into a plain the while, and I sought anxiously for some sign that the weary Desert was crossed. Finally, I saw, above the endless clusters of thorns, a line of darker, richer green, far away in the burning distance, and knew it to be a grove of date-palms—the glorious signal of the Nile. This put new life into me, and thenceforth I felt the scorching heat no longer. To the north, beyond the palms, appeared an isolated mountain of singular form—the summit being flat and the sides almost perpendicular. It must be Djebel Berkel, I thought, and I told Mohammed so, but he said it was not. Just then, I saw an Arab herdsman among the thorns and called out to him to know the name of the mountain. “Djebel Berkel,” said he. He then accosted Mohammed: “Where are you going?” “To Merawe.” “Are you the guide?” he again inquired, bursting into a loud laugh. “You are a fine guide; there is Merawe!” pointing in a direction very different from that we were going. This completed the old fellow’s discomfiture. We were still five or six miles distant from the river and took a random path over the plain, in the direction indicated by the herdsman. The palms rose higher and showed a richer foliage; mud walls appeared in their shade, and a tall minaret on the opposite bank of the river pointed out the location of the town. I rode down outof the drear, hot sand—the sea where I had been drifting for seven wearisome days—to the little village of Abdôm, embowered in a paradise of green; palms above, dazzling wheat-fields, dark cotton-fields and blossoming beans below. A blessed resting-place!