Abou-Sin, my Dromedary.CHAPTER XXXVI.THE BATN EL-HADJAR.The Batn El-Hadjar, or Belly of Stone—Ancient Granite Quarries—The Village of Dal—A Ruined Fortress—A Wilderness of Stones—The Hot Springs of Ukmé—A Windy Night—A Dreary Day in the Desert—The Shekh’s Camel Fails—Descent to Samneh—The Temple and Cataract—Meersheh—The Sale of Abou-Sin—We Emerge from the Belly of Stone—A Kababish Caravan—The Rock of Abou-Seer—View of the Second Cataract—We reach Wadi-Halfa—Selling my Dromedaries—Farewell to Abou-Sin—Thanksgiving on the Ferry-boat—Parting with the Camel-men.
Abou-Sin, my Dromedary.
Abou-Sin, my Dromedary.
Abou-Sin, my Dromedary.
The Batn El-Hadjar, or Belly of Stone—Ancient Granite Quarries—The Village of Dal—A Ruined Fortress—A Wilderness of Stones—The Hot Springs of Ukmé—A Windy Night—A Dreary Day in the Desert—The Shekh’s Camel Fails—Descent to Samneh—The Temple and Cataract—Meersheh—The Sale of Abou-Sin—We Emerge from the Belly of Stone—A Kababish Caravan—The Rock of Abou-Seer—View of the Second Cataract—We reach Wadi-Halfa—Selling my Dromedaries—Farewell to Abou-Sin—Thanksgiving on the Ferry-boat—Parting with the Camel-men.
On the sixth day after leaving Dongola I passed through Sukkôt, and reached the commencement of Batn El-Hadjar—The Belly of Stone—as the savage mountain country for ahundred miles south of the Second Cataract is termed. With each day the road became more rough and toilsome, and my camels moved more languidly. In spite of the fatigue which we all endured, I felt so much strengthened by our free life and so much interested in the remarkable country through which we were passing, that I felt something like regret on approaching the southern limit of travel on the Nile. Not so my dragoman and servant, who could not enough thank God and the Prophet for having taken them in safety through countries which they deemed the verge of the world. Achmet positively declared he would never make the trip again, for no second journey could be equally fortunate. My camel-men, I found, had never before travelled to Wadi Halfa by the western bank, but by a wonderful Arab instinct, they never went astray from the road.
The Batn El-Hadjar marks its commencement by a range of granite hills, which break the river into a foaming cataract. After leaving camp, our road lay along the Nile, behind some high sand-hills. In front of us appeared Djebel Ufeer, a peak about fifteen hundred feet in height, its naked sides tinted of a deep, rich purple hue by the glowing air. The Nile flows directly towards its base, making a slight curve, as if to pass it on the eastern side, but finding the granite rocks heaped together too thickly, changes its course and washes the western foot of the mountain. The granite lies scattered about in vast masses, taking all sorts of quaint and fanciful shapes. The hills themselves are merely collections of boulders of all sizes, from three to twenty feet in diameter, piled on an enormous bed or stratum of the same. Intermixed with this are beds of a rich yellowish-red granite, which crops out under the pilesof gray, and has been worked, wherever it appears in large masses. The traces of the ancient quarrymen still remain, in the blocks bearing marks of the wooden wedges by which they were split. In one place I noticed two fragments of a column, similar to those in the palace at Old Dongola. The granite is equal in quality and still more abundant than that at Assouan, but was only quarried to a limited extent. The aspect of the country is rugged in the highest degree, and how the Nile gets through it became more and more a wonder to me. His bed is deep-sunken between enormous stone-piles, back of which are high stone mountains, and wherever there is a hollow between them, it is filled with sand. The only vegetation was a few bunches of miserable grass, and some of those desert shrubs which grow at the very doors of Tartarus, so tenacious of life are they. A narrow shelf, on the opposite bank, high above the river, bore the renowned palm of Sukkôt, and frequently in the little coves I saw the living green of the young wheat. The steep banks were planted with lupins, as the people there had nothing to fear from the hippopotami.
While I was breakfasting off a great granite table, a man who rode by on a donkey cheered me with the news that the village of Dal was but a short distance ahead. I had fixed upon this as our resting-place for the night, but on finding it so near, resolved to push on to some natural hot springs and ruins of ancient baths, which the camel-men had informed me were about four hours further, to the right of the caravan track. At Dal, however, a difficultakabacommences, and my camels already marched so slowly and wearily that I judged it best to stop and give them a little rest. About the village there are some scattering doum and date-palms, which lead ahard existence, half buried in sand and choked with the old leaves, which the natives are too idle to prune. The people were in the fields, cutting some wheat which was just ripe, and two sakias, shaded by clusters of palms, watered a few patches of cotton. I made inquiries, but had much difficulty in finding the location of the hot springs. Finally, one of the men consented to become my guide in the morning, and conducted us to a camping-ground, where there was a little grass for the camels. Lured by the promise of backsheesh, he brought me the leanest of young sheep, which I purchased for eight piastres. The night was calm, cool and delicious, and steeped my whole frame in balm, after the burning day. The moon, nearly full, shone with a gray and hazy lustre, and some insect that shrilled like a tree-toad, reminded me of home.
Our Dallee guide, Hadji Mohammed, as he was called, from having made two pilgrimages to Mecca, was on hand before sunrise. Starting in advance of the caravan, I walked along the river-bank, towards a castellated building on an eminence which I had noticed the previous evening, while sketching the landscape. My path was over huge beds of gray granite, from which the old Egyptians might have cut obelisks of a single block, not only one hundred, but five hundred feet in length. The enormous masses which had been separated from these beds and rolled into rounded masses by the chafing of primeval floods, lay scattered on the surface, singly, or piled in fantastic groups. The building was a large fortress of stones and clay, with massive walls, on the summit of an island-like peak overhanging the river, and separated from the bank by a deep chasm, which is filled with water during the inundations, but was then dry, and its sides green with wheatand beans. Wild doum-palms, hanging heavy with green fruit, grew in the patches of soil among the rocks and overhung the ravine. The fortress was a very picturesque object, with its three square towers, backed by the roaring flood and the dark violet-blue crags of Djebel Mémé behind. The forms of the landscape—except the palms—were all of the far North, but the coloring was that of the ripe and glowing South. I was so absorbed in the scene, that the caravan passed unnoticed, having taken a path further from the river. After wandering about for some time, I climbed one of the granite piles and scanned the country in all directions, but could see nothing. Finally I descried a distant trail, and on reaching it, recognized the tracks of my camels. I hurried on, and in half an hour met Hadji Mohammed and one of my camel-men, coming back in great tribulation, fearful that I was lost.
Near the Cataract of Dal, an akaba commences, which extends to the village of Ukmé, in the Batn el-Hadjar, a distance of about fifteen miles. We passed behind some peaks of black porphyry, whose shoulders were covered with steep, sliding drifts of yellow sand, and travelled on through a wilderness of stones. All the refuse odds and ends of Creation—the pieces left after the rocks and mountains of the rest of the world were fashioned—have been thrown together here. It was a sea of black stone-mounds, out of which rose occasional peaks of still blacker stone. Through this we passed into a region of gray stone and then into another of red stone, journeying for four hours up one mound and down another, by paths and no paths, which were most laborious for our camels. I began to be fearful we should never get out of the geological labyrinth into which the hadji conducted us, but the majesticrange of Djebel El-Lamool, beyond the Nile, served him as a guide. He looked occasionally towards a bastion-like projection in the sheer walls of porphyry, and at last, when I was quite tired and famished, took us up a ridge whence I saw the river again below us. The road into the valley was next to impracticable, but our camels stumbled and scrambled and slid till they reached the ledge of halfeh overhanging the river. Below us was a square mass of burnt brick, about ten feet in height—part of a building long since destroyed. “Here is the bath,†said the hadji. We dismounted, and he conducted us to the foot of the ruin, where, in a hole in the earth, a spring of water bubbled up profusely, and trickled away, through a trough of stones. There was an end of my anticipations of a refreshing bath, for which I had come prepared. The water was hot enough, in truth (131°), and I could not bear my hand below the surface. Under the bank, a dozen springs with a smaller flow of water, oozed through the soil, which was covered with a whitish deposit in places. To atone for my disappointment, I took breakfast in the shadow of the ruined wall, while my camel-men bathed themselves in the water, with many exclamations of “Bismillà hi!†(In the name of God). The hadji then left us, and we followed the Nile past the cataracts of Song and Tangoori, which latter we heard all night, roaring grandly between the gusts of wind.
During the night the wind blew violently, and I had great fears that my tent would come down about my ears. I heaped the sand against it on the outside, for further protection, but every thing within was so covered that its original color could no longer be discerned. The moon shone between wild and stormy clouds, and all signs betokened a gust of rain. Wetook more than ordinary precautions in the disposition of our baggage, as this part of the road was much infested with marauding bands of Kababish, who came from the side of Dar-FÅ«r and plundered the inhabitants along the river, as well as small caravans. I trusted in the protection afforded by my tent, which, from its appearance, would be taken as belonging to an officer of the government.
On the eighth day we rose—for the first time in all my African travel—in a cold, raw and cloudy dawn. Fortunately for us, a company of merchants, bound for Wadi-Halfa, passed at daybreak, for we entered on anakabaof unknown length, and the wind had blown so violently within the last few days that the old caravan trail was not to be found. The country was a wilderness even more drear than those we had passed. On climbing the long stony surges, I sometimes flattered myself with the hope of seeing beyond the Desert; but no—I had only a more extended horizon. Long, shadowy streaks of rain swept along the eastern horizon, and the mountain-chains which lay against them were colored the darkest and intensest shade of violet—precisely that of the lower leaves of the pansy. As we advanced, the air grew colder, and a shower of large, scattering drops passed over us. The camels shrank and trembled, and my men crept behind them for shelter. Though it was a satisfaction to know that those African skiescanrain sometimes, I was soon so benumbed as to need my capote. The temperature was perhaps not lower than 60°, yet I felt it severely. About ten o’clock, the shekh’s camel, which had before shown symptoms of fatigue, lay down and refused to go further. As it was impossible to stop in the Desert, I distributed its load among the other four, and ordered him todrive it loose behind us. This, however, was of no avail, and at last he concluded to wait till it had rested a little. I gave him the water-skin, and we pushed on. Half an hour afterwards, when I was eating breakfast under the lee of a sand-hill, Ali, who had remained behind with him, came up saying they had examined the camel and decided that it was sick. The shekh thereupon wept most vehemently, fearing it would die, and turned about with it to make his way home. Ali lent him a dollar and promised to take him the rest of the money due him. The other men were quite downcast by the shekh’s misfortune. There was nothing to be done, however, but to push ahead, as the other camels were well nigh worn out.
We kept on all the afternoon, with the cold wind blowing in our faces, and occasionally a shower of colder rain dashed upon us. The road ascended until towards noon, when we passed through a gateway between two peaks of granite, whose loose masses threatened to topple down the sides and crush us. Then for three or four hours we travelled over more elevated ranges, from the crests of which we had wide glimpses over the terrible tract, yet could see nothing but sand and stones—stones and sand. In the east a long mountain-range lay dark and distant, under the shadow of the rain-clouds, and it was some comfort to know that it was beyond the Nile. As night approached, I feared we should be obliged to camp in the akaba, and without water, but after ten hours of most wearisome travel, we reached a ridge, whence we looked into a vast basin of rocky hills, between us and the mountains, whose long chain of jagged peaks, touched with the full yellow light of the setting sun, stood against the black gust that rolled away beyondthem into the Great Nubian Desert. The Nile was not to be seen, yet deep in the centre of this landscape, I caught a glimpse of some thorny bushes, which our further descent showed to be near the village and cataract of Samneh. The bed of the river was filled with masses of black rock, and the cataract, just below the village, roared magnificently all through the night. The wind blew again, and so violently, that I awoke with my ears, mouth and nostrils filled with sand.
The morning was cold, with a violent wind, but I strengthened my camels with an abundant feed of bean-vines and dourra, and set off early. I walked ahead to the temple of Samneh, which stands on a rocky eminence above the cataract. The hill is surrounded with the remains of a massive brick wall, and there are traces of a road leading to the summit. The temple is quite small, and of simple though graceful design, containing only one chamber, at the end of which a headless statue lies on its back. From the little portico in front there is a fine view of the gorge through which the river breaks. A broad stratum of porphyry crosses his bed, broken only in the centre by a gap or flood-gate, not twenty yards across. Through this the whole force of his current is poured, and at the time of my visit, when the water was low, he seemed but a pigmy flood. In fact, for a mile or two below this cataract, there is scarcely any point in all his tortuous and difficult course where one might not throw a stone across. After leaving the temple, our road led over the desolate stony hills, high above the river’s bed. We looked down into the deep and narrow defile through which he flows, and which his waters scarcely brightened or cheered, for there was no vegetation on his banks except now and then a bunch of halfeh grass or afew stunted thorns. The air was so bracing that I felt no more fatigue, but only regret, that the journey was so near its close. Old Mohammed walked ahead, singing his accustomed song: “Koolloo nasee fee djennatee, tefoddhel, ya er-rakhman!†(O Most Merciful, grant that all my people may enter thy Heavens!) Thus we travelled all day, and towards evening came down to the Nile again at the little village of Meersheh.
This place is a beautiful little oasis in the midst of the savage Belly of Stone. The Nile has a more gentle current, and his banks have room enough for some groves of luxuriant date-trees, and fields of wheat and cotton. My tent was pitched beside the rustling palms, and I sat down with a glad heart and a full pipe, on the last night of my long and toilsome journey by land. During the evening one of the natives took a fancy to my Abou-Sin, and made numerous small offers for the purchase of him. I refused, preferring to send him on to Assouan, but in the morning the man came again, and at last, with many struggles, raised his price to one hundred and ninety piastres, whereupon I thought it best to sell and so avoid all further trouble. I stipulated, however, that Abou-Sin was to be delivered to him at Wadi-Halfa, and that he should accompany us thither on the morrow. The night was intensely cold, although the air was probably not below 60°. I could hardly bear the coldness of the water in the morning. It stung my burnt face like fire, and increased the pains of my unfortunate cracked nose. The Barabras brought me some milk for my coffee in a basket of closely-plaited grass, smeared with grease on the inside. It precisely resembled those baskets made by the Indians of California, which will carry water.The milk, however, had a taste of the rancid grease, which prevented me from drinking much of it.
We arose shivering in the early dawn, and for the last time put the loads on our fagged and unwilling camels. Soon after starting, I saw ahead, through a gateway of black porphyry rocks, the long, yellow sand-hills of the Libyan Desert, like those which line the western bank of the Nile, from Assouan to Korosko. This was a joyful token that we had reached the end of the savage Batn El-Hadjar. As we were travelling over the rolling upland of yellow sand, enjoying the view of the wild frontier of the Belly of Stone, out of which we had just issued, a large caravan of Kababish Arabs, returning towards Dar-Fūr with empty camels, met us. There were upwards of fifty camels and thirty men—half-naked savages, with projecting features, wild eyes, and a wilderness of hair on their heads. The Kababish were easily distinguished by their long plaits, laid close to the head, and smeared with fat. The others, who had enormous masses of wool, standing out in all directions for a foot or more, were probably Howoweet, from the side of Dar-Fūr. We asked the distance to Wadi Halfa, and were answered with the universal “hassa,†(just now!) whereby these people designate any indefinite period of time.
After three or four hours, I began to look out for Abou-Seer, a lofty cliff to which travellers repair for a bird’s-eye view of the Second Cataract—to them the turning point of their Nile journey, to me the termination of my long mid-African rambles, and the commencement of my return to the living world. Our road was a mile or two behind the river, and as Achmet had only visited the mountain from the side of Wadi Halfa, he could not serve as a guide. I turned into thehills, taking him, Mohammed and Ali, and leaving the other man to go on with the baggage camels. We wandered for some time over the rough ridges, and at last reached a spur of the hills which Achmet took to be Abou-Seer, but which was not it. I was so hungry that I stopped for breakfast, and before I had finished, Ali, who was overflowing with joy at the idea of reaching Wadi Halfa, came to me with the news that he had been climbing a high point, whence he could see the end of the mountains. The Nile, beyond, he said, was broad and smooth, and there were more date-trees than he had seen since leaving Sukkôt. I left him to ride my Abou-Sin, and walked on to the peak he had climbed. As I reached its base, however, I saw that the true headland projected still further beyond, terminating in a cone-like summit. As I came out from among the hills behind it, the view suddenly opened before me far to the north and east, and I saw the long date-groves of Wadi Halfa apparently at my feet.
Abou-Seer is a cliff of calcareous rock, and its base is completely covered with the names of tourists who have visited it. Achmet wanted me to add my name to theirs, but as I had brought no hammer and chisel from Cairo, like most travellers, I could not gratify him. A few steps took me to the summit of the cliff, which drops on the eastern side in a sheer precipice to the water’s edge. It is at least three hundred feet in perpendicular height, and as it forms the corner of the range, the view on three sides is uninterrupted for many leagues. The panorama is truly grand, and probably unlike any other in the world. To the south the mountains of the Batn El-Hadjar rise like a black wall, out of which the Nile forces its way, not in a broad sheet, but in a hundred vexed streams,gurgling up amid chaotic heaps of rocks as if from subterranean sources, foaming and fretting their difficult way round endless islands and reefs, meeting and separating, seeking every where an outlet and finding none, till at last, as if weary of the long contest, the rocks recede, and the united waters spread themselves out, sluggish and exhausted, on the sands below. It is a wonderful picture of strife between two material forces, but so intricate and labyrinthine in its features, that the eye can scarcely succeed in separating them, or in viewing it other than as a whole. The streams, in their thousand windings, appear to flow towards all points of the compass, and from their continual noise and motion on all sides, the whole fantastic wilderness of rock seems to heave and tug, as it is throttled by the furious waters. This is the last great struggle and triumph of the Nile. Henceforth, his tortured waters find repose. He goes down to Egypt as a conquerer, crowned with a double majesty after all his toils. Is it to be wondered at, that the ancient race which existed by his bounty, should worship him as a God?
But by this time we saw our baggage-camels, like specks on the sand, approaching Wadi Halfa. Ali, unable to contain himself, started off on a run, and we soon lost sight of him. I mounted my faithful big dromedary, Abou-Sin, and after two more hours on his lofty hump, dismounted at the ferry-place, opposite Wadi Halfa, never, alas! to mount him again. A boat with a company of merchants from Cairo had just arrived, and the sailors were unloading their packages of merchandise. The merchants came up and saluted me, and could scarcely believe that I had been so far as the White Nile. They were bound for Dongola, and one of them, learning that my browndromedary was for sale, offered to buy it. Achmet conducted the business for me, for the bargaining lasted at least two hours, before the purchaser succeeded in slowly struggling up to a decent price. The Barà bra who had bought Abou-Sin was also on hand, to ratify the bargain, and I was thus saved from the necessity of sending the animals to the markets of Assouan. I must do both the men the justice to say that they afterwards made every exertion to cheat me, in the way of counting money and offering bad pieces, and at last gave a large pile of copper coin, which, when it was counted, lacked two piastres of the right amount. When all was finished, I delivered Abou-Sin into the hands of his rascally new master, with a sorrowful heart, for the old fellow and I were good friends. Had he known we were to be separated, I am sure those large black eyes of his would have dropped a few tears, and that capacious throat gurgled out a sound of lamentation. Achmet threw his arms around the beast’s big head and kissed him tenderly. I was about to do the same thing, when I remembered that the never-sweating skin of a dromedary exhales not the freshest of odors, and preferred caressing him with my hand rather than my lips. So farewell to Abou-Sin, and may he never want dourra and bean-vines, nor complain under too heavy loads: and should he die soon (for he is waxing in years), may some son of his strong loins be there to carry me, when next I visit Central Africa!
My arrival at Wadi Halfa terminated the journey of thirty-four days from Khartoum. In that time my little caravan had travelled between eight and nine hundred miles, and at least half of it as rough travelling as can be found in Africa. Now we were beyond danger and done with fatigue, and couldlook forward to seeing Cairo in another month. Not until we were all seated in the ferry-boat, crossing from the opposite bank, did I fairly realize that our severe journey was over. The camels were left behind, the baggage piled up on board, and as we were rowed slowly across the river, it suddenly flashed through my mind that the same gentle motion of oars and waves was thenceforth to rock me all the way to Cairo. I drew a long breath, and fervently ejaculated: “el hamdu lillà h!†to which the others, as in duty bound, responded. Achmet, who usually postponed his prayers until he reached home, recited a chapter from the Koran, and Ali, who never prayed, broke into sailor-songs by starts, and laughed continually, from inward delight.
After my tent was pitched on the beach, I called my camel-men, Ali and Mohammed, who had crossed with me, and gave them each the forty piastres still due, with a Maria Theresa dollar—abou-zerà r, or the Father of Buttons, as this coin is called in Central Africa, from the button which clasps the drapery on the Empress’s shoulder—as backsheesh. The men were delighted, and kissed my hand, in token of gratitude. I gave them also the money for the shekh, and took leave of them with the exclamation: “May God grant you a prosperous return to your country!†They replied, warmly: “May God prolong your days, O Effendi!†and as they moved away, I overheard old Mohammed again declare to Achmet; “Wallah, but this is a good Frank! He certainly has Islam in his heart!â€