CHAPTERXXI.

CHAPTERXXI.Fresh wanderings, Dyoor remedy for wounds. Crocodiles in the Ghetty. Former residence of Miss Tinné. Dirt and disorder. The Baggara-Rizegat. An enraged fanatic. The Pongo. Frontiers of the Bongo and Golo. A buffalo-calf shot. Idrees Wod Defter’s Seriba. Golo dialect. Corn magazines of the Golo. The Kooroo. The goats’ brook. Increasing level of land. Seebehr’s Seriba Dehm Nduggoo. Discontent of the Turks. Visit to an invalid. Ibrahim Effendi. Establishment of the Dehms. Nubians rivals to the slave-dealers. Population of Dar Ferteet. The Kredy. Overland route to Kordofan. Shekka. Copper mines of Darfoor. Raw copper.Thethird New Year’s Day that I passed on African soil now dawned, and it was precisely on the 1st of January, 1871, that I found myself starting off upon my long-projected tour to the west. I left my little Tikkitikki to the temporary guardianship of Khalil, and set out accompanied by two of my servants, the negro lads, and the few bearers that were necessary to carry the little remnant of my property.My scheme was first of all to pay a visit to Bizelly’s Seriba, thirty-two miles to the north-west, the same that had been Miss Tinné’s headquarters seven years previously; and as the controller happened to be passing through Kurshook Ali’s Seriba on his return from a business tour, I was glad to avail myself of the chance of travelling in company with one who was well acquainted with the country. The name of this man was Bakhit Yussuf; he was a negro by birth, and had formerly been in the service of Kleincznick, a Hungarian,who at the time of Miss Tinné’s expedition had owned a Seriba in the Kozanga mountains, and who by the shameless way in which he had prosecuted the slave-trade, had fallen under the censure of the Khartoom authorities.We crossed the Wow at the same wooded spot as we had done in April 1869. This river, the Nyenahm of the Dyoor, the Herey of the Bongo, during the rainy season has a depth of fourteen to sixteen feet without ever overflowing its banks; even at this date the bed of the noble forest-stream was still quite covered with water, the depth of which near the banks was three or four feet, decreasing in the middle of the current to less than two feet. The varying depth, however, did not affect the velocity, which was uniform throughout and about ninety-eight feet a minute. The width of the Wow I found by careful measurement to be 132 feet.AN UNCOURTEOUS VOKEEL.Beyond the river we passed through cultivated lands, leaving Agahd’s chief Seriba on our left; we then crossed a low range of hills stretching towards the north-east, and brought our day’s march to an end in the hamlet of a Dyoor chief named Dimmoh, where we encamped for the night. I had purposely avoided entering the Seriba Wow, although it was quite within reach, my reason being that I had recently been aggrieved by the behaviour of the acting Vokeel, one of the few men of Turkish origin who had settled in the land. A short time previously I had despatched a document of considerable importance to myself, containing a narrative of my late misfortunes, directing it to the commander of the Egyptian camp, so that through him it might be put on the right track for Europe,viâKordofan; but although the controllers of all the other Seribas had readily passed on my despatch from place to place by means of special messengers, this Turkish Vokeel had sent it back to me with the paltry excuse that he had received no instructions from myself personally as to where he should forward it. I was thus compelledto be the bearer of my own papers as far as the Egyptian camp in Seebehr’s Seriba, whence I hoped to be able to send them on by one of the slave caravans that made the place their starting-point.Our night-camp afforded me an opportunity of renewing my familiarity with the idyllic village life of the Dyoor. The sorghum harvest had long been gathered in, and the dokhn had been safely stored in the great urn-like bins that were so essential a fixture in every hut; a second crop was now in course of being housed, consisting of the kindy (Hyptis) that springs up between the stubble, many of the women being engaged in the task, which is very tedious, of cleansing the poppy-like seeds. About the fields were lying many of those strange cylinder-shaped melons, which appear to be peculiar to the Dyoor, with their rind like that of the bottle-gourd and as hard as wood. There were also large numbers of the fleshy variegated calyces of the Sabdariffa dried all ready for storing, a condition in which they retain their pungency, and serve the purpose of giving the soups of the natives an acid flavour almost as sharp as vinegar.Several of the old men and women that I saw looked very decrepit; a circumstance which I mention, because amongst the Bongo, slaves to heathen superstition as they are, I never noticed a single individual whose hair was grey.I was a witness here of what struck me as a very singular method of treating wounds. A boy’s knee had been grazed, and I saw a woman apply some of the acrid juice of theModecca abyssinica. Forskal, who discovered the plant in Arabia, where it goes by the name of “Aden,” says that pulverized and taken internally it causes a swelling of the limbs that does not fail to terminate fatally. The Dyoor woman scraped the rind off a piece of the stem, and having expressed the juice from the soft pulp spread it upon a damp leaf; this was laid as a plaster upon the wound and covered with another leaf. I could not help regretting thattime did not allow me to ascertain the efficiency of the operation.The nights were calm and beautifully starlight, so that our rest in the open air was very enjoyable, and we started off each morning before sunrise with our energies thoroughly requickened.THE HAMLETS OF WOLL.After going awhile uphill over some rocky ground we came to a declivity of nearly a hundred feet; at the bottom of this we had to cross a wide swampy depression covered with the Terminalia forests that so often characterise such localities. The holes and hollows, although they were now completely dry, gave ample testimony as to what must be the number of the pools that would obstruct the path during the height of the rainy season. In a short time we reached the hamlets of a Dyoor chief named Woll, that were scattered about an open plain covered with cultivated fields; this was the frontier of Bizelly’s territory. A tree something like an acacia, theEntada sudanica, remarkable for its pods, a foot long and thin as paper, and breaking into numbers of pieces when ripe, was the chief feature in the bush-forests of the environs, although it is a tree which is generally rare in the country.The bearers with whom Khalil had supplied me were here dismissed, their place being taken by others who had come up at the orders of Bakhit Yussuf. Woll’s people were very busy collecting their iron-ore and putting their smelting-furnaces into readiness for use. In the vicinity of the village there was an iron-mine similar to that near Kurshook Ali’s Seriba.Over rocky soil and through tracts of dense bushwood we marched on, until in front of us we saw a kind of valley-plateau, bare of trees, apparently shut in on the farther side by an eminence extending towards the north-east, which is the general direction of the territory of the Dyoor in this district. Here we entered a little Seriba of Bizelly’s, knownby the name of Kurnuk,[64]where we were well entertained during the midday hours.In the afternoon we set off again, and mounted the wooded height covered with great tracts of the Göll tree (Prosopis), which is noticeable for producing a fruit very like the St. John’s bread. Then again descending, we came to the dried-up bed of a watercourse that was closely overhung with bushes. Beyond this were various cultivated plots, dotted here and there with huts; and we next entered a splendid forest of lofty Humboldtiæ, which by its extent and denseness reminded me of our own European woods. Our path was shaded by these noble trees until we reached the Ghetty, or “Little Wow,” six miles above the spot where Dr. Steudner lies buried on its bank.This tributary of the Dyoor was about as large as the Molmul near Aboo Guroon’s Seriba; its bed was between fifty and sixty feet wide; its banks were ten feet high. At present it was little more than a narrow ditch, with no perceptible motion in its waters, but I was told that lower down it widened out into pools that were always full of water. But insignificant as the Ghetty looked, it was large enough to be the resort of crocodiles so daring and voracious that they were the terror of the neighbourhood, the rapacity of the creatures very probably arising from a prevalent scarcity of fish. A few weeks previously, when the stream was full to the top of its banks, a Dyoor boy as he was swimming across had been snapped at by one of these ravenous Saurians and had never been seen again. It is surprising in the dry season, into what tiny pools and puddles the crocodile will make its way, and where, buried in the miry clay, it will find a sufficiently commodious home. In comparison with thesepools the tanks with which the specimens in the aquariums of our zoological gardens are provided must be fully if not superfluously spacious. When kept in confinement the crocodile makes scarcely any perceptible growth; and from this circumstance of the slow increase of its bulk the inference seems necessarily to follow that the creature lives to a great age.The Ghetty is bordered by bushes nearly identical with those which are found on the banks of all the streamlets of this land; theMorelia senegalensis, theZizygium, and theTrichilia retusamay be noted as amongst the most common.I was told that Bizelly’s head Seriba, known amongst the Bongo as Doggaya Onduppo, was situated upon the right bank, about eight leagues to the north-west of the spot where we crossed the stream, which here forms the boundary between the Wow tribe of the Dyoor and the district populated by the Bongo. We continued to advance for another league and a half, going up a densely-wooded acclivity until at length, fairly tired out with our exertions, we entered, quite late in the evening, Bizelly’s subsidiary Seriba, called by the Bongo Doggaya-morr.PREDECESSORS ON THE SOIL.Here, for the first time, I found myself on what my scientific predecessors had made what to my mind was nothing less than a classic soil. Here it was that Theodor von Heuglin had resided from the 17th of April, 1863, to the 4th of January, 1864; here, or at least in an adjacent village of the Wow tribe, had Dr. Steudner[65]expired; and close in the vicinity had Miss Tinné passed through a period of wretchedness which all her wealth was powerless to prevent. Never could I leave the Seriba without being conscious thatevery shrub and every plant was a memorial of those who had been before me, for all were representatives of that hitherto unknown flora of which Heuglin had collected the first botanical data, and which Dr. Kotschy has depicted in his noble work ‘Plantæ Tinnianæ,’ partly from the drawings of Miss Tinné herself.Within the Seriba, too, I was constantly reminded of the miserable condition to which this expedition, so comprehensive in its original design, had been reduced. The region bore every token of having an unhealthy climate. The stagnant meadow-waters and foul streams all around had all the appearance of being veritable and prolific breeding-places for fever and malaria. A great ruined tenement, now a mere lodgment for sheep and goats, marked the spot where the remains of Miss Tinné’s mother, who fell a victim to the pernicious climate, were temporarily deposited until the opportunity came for them to be removed to her distant home. A dejected fate indeed, and a miserable resting-place for one who had been reared amidst the comforts and luxuries of the highest refinement.Before leaving Bizelly’s Seriba we received intelligence of the murder of our old friend Shol, the wealthy Dinka princess, into the details of whose personal charms and associations I have, in an earlier page, entered with some minuteness. The natives, it seems, had accused her of inviting the “Turks” into the country; and as many of the tribes in the neighbourhood had been exposed to attacks from Kurshook Ali’s troops, they determined to avenge themselves on Shol, as being a long-standing ally of the Khartoomers. Knowing that she slept alone in her hut, a troop of men belonging to the Wady (a tribe settled to the east of the Meshera) set out by night, and under pretext of having business with Kurdyook, her husband, knocked at her door. She had no sooner appeared in answer to their summons than they attacked her with deadly blows; and setting fireto all the huts drove off nearly all the cattle that was to be found in the place. This melancholy piece of news, coupled with the recent defeat of the Khartoomers by the Niam-niam, foreboded ill for the future prospects of the Seribas; by Shol’s death the vicinity of the Meshera would lose all its peaceful character, and there was no longer the possibility of solitary boats being left there in security during the season of the rains.LONGO.A lovely march of about six miles to the north-west, through an almost unbroken and in many places very dense bush-forest, brought us to Ali Amoory’s[66]chief Seriba, distinguished by the natives by the name of Longo. The Parkia trees were just beginning to bloom. The wonderful spectacle that these presented was quite unique; their great trusses of bright red blossoms, large as the fist and smooth as velvet, made a display that was truly gorgeous, as they depended from the long stalks which broke forth from the feathery foliage of the spreading crowns.Another characteristic of the scenery was theBoxia salicifolia, that appeared in great abundance.In spite of the constant traffic between the different Seribas there seemed to be no lack of game; traces of hartebeests were everywhere visible, whilst the little madoqua antelopes bounded like apparitions from bush to bush. Guinea-fowls were just as prolific as in the wildest deserts of the Niam-niam. Heuglin, no inexperienced sportsman, had certainly here chosen a remunerative ground for his zoological researches.Our path was crossed by three watercourses, which were now for the most part dry. By their confluence these three streams formed an important tributary of the Dyoor, called the Okuloh, their separate names before their junction,reckoning from the southernmost, being respectively the Dangyah, the Matshoo, and the Minnikinyee or “fish-water;” their uniformly north-eastern direction attested the material fall in the level of the ground at the boundary between the rocky soil and the alluvial plains of the Dyoor.Longo ranked as a first-class establishment. It contained a larger number of huts than even Ghattas’s Seriba, which it surpassed also in dirt and disorder. Every hedge was crooked, every hut stood awry, and the farmsteads were as ruined as though they had for years been abandoned to the ravages of rats and white ants. Disgusting heaps of ashes and scraps of food, piles of rotten straw, hundreds of old baskets and gourd-shells stood as high as one’s head all along the narrow alleys that parted hut from hut; whilst outside the Seriba, just at its very entrances, there were masses of mouldy rubbish, overgrown with the most noxious of fungus, that rose as high as the houses; at every step there was sure to be an accumulation of some abominable filthiness or other, such as nowhere else, I should think, even in the Mohammedan world, could be found in immediate proximity to human habitations; altogether the place presented such a dismal scene of dirt, decay, and disorder that it was enough to induce a fit of nightmare upon every one with the smallest sense of either neatness or decorum. Truly it was a wonderful specimen of domestic economy which this horde of undisciplined Nubians had thus elaborated.The level country for a mile or more round the Seriba was occupied by the arable lands belonging to the settlement. Longo was one of the oldest establishments in the country, and the adjacent soil was no less productive than that around the Seriba of Ghattas. The Bongo villages were all situated at some distance to the west.Amoory’s representative agent, Zelim, had formerly been a soldier, one of the Nizzam, in the Turkish service, and was a native of the wild district of Baria, in the mountains ofTaka; he was now absent from the Seriba, but had left orders that I should be hospitably entertained and that everything which his stores could furnish should be placed at my disposal. A grove of excellent plantains was close at hand, from which I obtained a bounteous supply of that luscious fruit.MUTUAL CURIOSITY.All the year round a considerable number of slave traders resided in the place, and were always attended by those wild sons of the steppes, the Baggara of the Rizegat, who, with their lean, fly-bitten cattle, had to camp out as well as they could in the environs of the Seriba. They had never before set eyes upon a Christian, and full of eager wonder they flocked together to survey me, keeping, however, at a distance of several yards from personal contact, probably dreading the malign influence of the “evil eye” of a Frank. Their curiosity was still further roused when they saw me drawing pictures of their cattle, and when I offered them my various sketches for their own inspection they appeared to lose much of the alarm which they had exhibited. I rose from my seat, and held up to them one picture after another; the effect was little short of magical; their uncouth tones seemed to soften into a murmur of delight, and so effectually had I succeeded in gaining their confidence that some of them were induced to sit for their own portraits. All those that I drew had fine light brown complexions, slim muscular frames, and perfectly regular features; the expression of the face might fairly be pronounced open and honest, and exhibited the strong resolution that might be expected of a warlike nation whose occupations, when not in the battle-field, were in hunting and cattle-breeding. Their profiles all formed quite a right angle; their noses failed to be aquiline, but were rounded and well-formed; the faces of the younger men were good-tempered looking, having a somewhat effeminate expression, which was still further increased by the high round forehead. All of them seemed to weartheir hair in long slender braids running in rows along the top of the head and drooping over the neck behind.As I was pursuing my occupation, and quietly taking my series of portraits, watched intently by a hundred spectators, who stood around with open mouths which revealed an astonished admiration, my attention was all at once arrested by a commotion which was taking place just outside the circle of the admirers. An old fanatic from Darfoor was raving away and denouncing loudly what he pleased to call the iniquity of my proceedings; he professed that my pursuit was beyond all endurance, and that he was not going to countenance my presumptuous practices. I shouted to the old rascal to hold his tongue, to mind his own business, and be off, and most of the bystanders took up the same strain, some beginning to taunt and jeer the fellow with such a volley of satirical laughter that, completely discomfited, he was glad to skulk off as quickly as he could. I could not resist having a word of my own, and just as he was retiring I shouted after him, for his comfort, the native proverb, “Trust to the protection of the Almighty as to the shade of an acacia, but,” I added, “they had need be better acacias than those of your miserable land.”On the 6th of January I resumed my progress. Taking a south-westerly direction I accomplished a good day’s march of eighteen miles and reached Damury, Amoory’s subsidiary Seriba on the River Pongo. A rocky soil covered with bush had predominated for the greater portion of the distance, the route having been perfectly level and unbroken by the smallest depression. We had crossed the beds of five brooks which were nearly dry. Taking them in order they were, the Okilleah, a mere line of stagnant puddles; the Kulloo,[67]a larger brook overhung with sizygium-bushes,and containing water as high as one’s knees; the Horroah, a dry hollow bed; the Daboddoo, with a few pools; and the Ghendoo, with holes from which the water had either dried up or drained away. All these, when supplied with water, were tributary to the Pongo, and flowed towards the north-west.A PLANT OF HAPPY OMEN.Midday, between the Kulloo and the Horroah, we had come upon a gigantic fig-tree (Ficus lutea), one of those memorials of the past that are so often seen in Bongoland, marking, as they do, the site of an earlier native village. The name of the place was Ngukkoo. The enormous tree had a short stem enveloped in a perfect network of aerial roots, struck downwards from the branches, whilst at the summit it spread out into a crown of foliage that under the vertical midday sun formed a shadow on the ground of which the circumference, as I proved by actual measurement, was not less than 230 feet.During the latter portion of the march we had seen a considerable number of candelabra Euphorbiæ and Calotropis. The appearance of the Calotropis (called in Arabic “el Usher”) was indicative of a more northerly type of vegetation, as the plant is characteristic of the steppes of Nubia, Arabia, and the frontiers of India: this was the first time I had seen it in the territory of the Seribas; the “el Usher” had evidently been introduced into this part of the country by traders from the north, and the solid stems of the plants, which elsewhere are little more than shrubs, bore ample witness to the long-established traffic on this commercial highway. The explanation of the extensive diffusion of this plant may be found in the fact that the silky down that covers the seeds in their large plump pods is used as a material for stuffing cushions. In the northern steppes its appearing in sight is ever hailed by the traveller as a happy omen, as it enjoys the reputation of always having either a well or a hidden spring of fresh water in its immediate vicinity.Damury was situated close to the right-hand bank of the Pongo, as the Bongo call this affluent of the Bahr-el-Arab. On earlier maps the river was marked as the Kozanga, but this I found to be merely the designation of a small mountainous ridge that extended for several leagues along the left bank of the river to the south-west of the Seriba. On the 17th of July, 1863, Theodor von Heuglin[68]had visited the spot for the purpose of selecting a dry and rocky eminence in the woods where a camp might be erected for the headquarters of Miss Tinné’s expedition. If this scheme had been carried into practice the melancholy sacrifice of life that resulted from the unwholesome atmosphere of Bizelly’s Seriba might happily have been spared; but the difficulties of properly organising so large a party of travellers were insuperable, and the project of removal to that healthier resort fell to the ground.The transitoriness which seems to be the characteristic of all the institutions of this land prevented me from ascertaining the exact site of the dwelling-place of the deceased Bongo chief Kulanda, mentioned by Heuglin in his account of the visit he made to the place; but from the comparison of certain points of correspondence, I entertain no doubt but that my footsteps were then upon the very spot.In its upper course through the district inhabited by the Sehre, the Pongo, as already noted, bears the name of the Djee; it flows towards the north-east, and after leaving the Bongo territory beyond Damury passes through that of the Dembo, a tribe of Shillook origin related to the Dyoor: on this account the Khartoomers call it the Bahr-el-Dembo.The Dembo are under the jurisdiction of Ali Amoory, whose territories extend far beyond the river to the north-west, and join the country of the Baggara-el-Homr, his most remote Seribas being on the Gebbel Marra, in the locality ofa negro tribe called the Bambirry, probably also a branch of the great Shillook family; but it should be stated that, according to some accounts, these Bambirry are true Zandey Niam-niam who have immigrated from the south and settled in their present quarters.THE RIVER PONGO.The scenery about Damury was extremely like that around Awoory in the Mittoo country; in fact it altogether reminded me of what I had seen on my trip to the Rohl, especially as the Pongo exhibits not a few points of resemblance to that river. Damury is built on rising rocky ground, thickly covered with wood, and close to the eastern or right-hand bank of the river. The slopes that enclosed the river-bed were about fifteen feet in depth, and between them and the actual stream there was, on either side, a strip of soil subject to inundation during the rainy season and now broken up with numerous pools and backwaters. At this date (January 7, 1871) the water was moving sluggishly along between clay banks, some 10 feet down and 70 feet apart; but the water did not cover a breadth of more than fifty feet and was nowhere more than four feet in depth. Its velocity was the same as that of the Wow; but whilst both the Wow and the Dyoor rolled along, even at this season, in considerable volume, the Pongo was comparatively empty, and, as I saw, it must have offered a very striking contrast to its appearance during the Khareef, when no doubt it could make good its pretensions to be a river of the second class. On the other side of the Pongo there was a low tract of steppe, at least 3000 paces wide, which, of course, represented the territory subject to inundation on the left bank. I subsequently found that the entire length of the river, from its source to Damury, could not at the most exceed 200 miles, and thus became able more completely to realise the very remarkable periodic changes which occur in the condition of the stream.In various parts of the depression the vegetation of the open steppe is replaced by close masses of stephogyne: theseform marshy clumps, and from their general habit very strongly resemble our alder-beds of the north.Close to the Seriba a deep chasm, called Gumango, opens out into the valley of the river; it is one of the landslips, so common in this region, caused by springs washing away the ferruginous swamp-ore from below, and an inexperienced traveller might easily be led to mistake it for the bed of a periodical watercourse of considerable magnitude. It is thickly overgrown with brambles and creepers. The shrub Tinnea plays a prominent part in the underwoods all around Damury, and many of the plants that are found growing on the dry sand of the bed of the Pongo may be considered as true representatives of the flora of the black Nile-earth, and prove the hydrographical importance of the stream.Just above the Seriba the course of the river was due east for a distance of four miles, and in pursuing our westward journey we marched along the left bank in the direction contrary to the stream until we arrived at the spot where it made its bend away from the south. Here we crossed. The sandy bed was not more than 100 feet wide, a grassy depression beyond was about 400 paces across. On the borders of this we came upon some ruined huts projecting above the grass, evidently the remains of a forsaken Seriba of Bizelly’s, which, had likewise been called Damury, after the name of the Bongo community that had had their homes in the district. The Bongo had now withdrawn beyond the right bank of the river, and thus the Pongo had been left as the boundary between the populated country and the actual wilderness.[69]With very slight deviations the remainder of our journey to Seebehr’s great Seriba was in a direction due west. The ground rose considerably, and on our left was a tall eminence of gneiss, called Ida, a northern spur of theKozanga ridge and (with regard to our present position) about 500 feet high. A deep brook, the Ooruporr, rising somewhere on the slopes of this Mount Ida, here crossed our path, the line of its banks being distinctly marked out by some specimens of the wild date-palm. A little farther on we came to a dry, deep chasm, that formed the bed of a periodic stream known as the Andimoh, which likewise descended from the hill of Ida; its banks were marked by crags of gneiss and studded with bamboos.THE KARRA.We passed onwards over masses of gneiss almost spherical in form, overgrown with moss-like clusters of selaginella, and reached the bed of the brook Karra, lying in its deep hollow. To this little stream the Nubians gave the name of Khor-el-Ganna, on account of the jungles of bamboo that enclose its rocky banks, which descend in successive steps so as to produce a series of cascades. The Bongo reckon the Karra as the boundary between their country and the country of the Golo; it is also considered to be the line which separates the domain of the landowner Ali Amoory from that of Idrees Wod Defter, whose Seriba is about thirty-five miles from Damury and, as nearly as possible, half way along our route thence to Seebehr’s chief settlement.Beyond the Karra the path led over very undulated country; and we had twice to cross a brook called Ya, which, formed mainly of a series of deep basins, worked its devious way along a contracted defile. Having at length mounted a steepish eminence of red rock we appeared to bring our long ascent to an end, and commencing a gradual descent we proceeded till we reached the brook Attidoh, beside which we encamped for the night.Large herds of buffaloes thronged the chief pools of the swampy bed, and before it became quite dark I managed to creep within range of a group of cows with their calves. The only result of my exertions was that one calf fell dead upon the spot where it was struck, all my other shotsapparently taking no effect. Half the night was spent in roasting, broiling, and drying the flesh of the young buffalo, and all my party were in great good humour.The forests for long distances were composed exclusively of lofty Humboldtiæ, and increased in magnitude and denseness as we advanced farther amongst them; they were so fine that they might well bear comparison with any of the best wooded districts of the Niam-niam. We crossed a half-dry khor (or stream-channel) called the Ngoory, and shortly afterwards a marshy brook, with a considerable supply of water, called the Akumunah; both of these joined the Mongono, of which the bed at the place where we crossed it was so dry that it appeared only like a tract of sand, seventy feet wide; but by turning up the loose sand to the depth of six inches, a copious stream of clear water was discovered to be running on its subterranean way over a gravelly bottom. In the rainy season the Mongono assumes quite a river-like appearance, for I discovered traces of important backwaters that had been left by its inundation, and the banks that bounded its sandy bed were not much less than eight feet high.A little rose-coloured gentian, the Causcora, characterises the slopes of the banks of this streamlet, growing just in the same luxuriant manner as the kindred species that adorn the sides of our own brooks. The frequent appearance of the Abyssinian Protea convinced me that the elevation of the ground was greater than what we had left behind us: as matter of fact we were at an average height of 2500 feet above the level of the sea.The Yow-Yow, a narrow sort of trench, made up of a series of deep pools, next intersected our path. On the other side of this I mounted a crag of gneiss, whence I obtained an extensive view towards the west, and observed an elevated line of woods stretched out with the precision of a wall from S.S.W. to N.N.E. The elevation was beyond the Athena, a brookthat we reached after first crossing two other but minor streams. The bed of the Athena was formed of sand and gravel; although it was dry, with the exception of some occasional water-pools that had not failed, it was fifty feet in width. The steepness of the banks demonstrated that in the rainy season they enclosed what would be allowed to be a considerable river. Two more brooks with deep beds had still to be crossed, and then we entered upon the cultivated land adjacent to Idrees Wod Defter’s Seriba. Two miles more, along a continuous ascent, brought us to the Seriba itself.IDREES WOD DEFTER.Idrees Wod Defter was a partner in Agahd’s firm. His Seriba had been built about three years previously, and was composed of large farmsteads, shut in almost with the seclusion of monasteries by tall hedges of straw-work; they were occupied by the various great slave-traders who had settled in the country. Four huts and a large rokooba had recently been erected for the accommodation of the numerous travellers who passed through, chiefly composed of second-class traders, who, like itinerant Jews, wandered about from place to place, hawking their goods. Idrees himself resided in his Niam-niam Seribas, which, I was told, were near Mofio’s residence, seven or eight days’ journey distant. Besides this chief settlement there were two subsidiary Seribas, one about four leagues to the south-east, on the western declivity of the Kozanga hills, and another at the same distance to the south-west, the controller of which was named Abd-el-Seed. The farmsteads of the chief Seriba stood in their separate enclosures, and were not surrounded by the ordinary palisade. Close by, on the south, a little spring trickling forth from a cleft in the ground suddenly expanded into a clear rippling brook that ran merrily to the west.The natives that served the necessary demands of the Seriba belonged to the tribe of the Golo. In manners andin general appearance they very much resemble their eastern neighbours the Bongo, although the dialects of the two tribes have very little in common. More than any other negro tongue with which I gained much familiarity, the Golo dialect seems to abound in sounds resembling the German vowelsöandü, and, like some of the South African dialects, it contains some peculiar nasal tones, which may be described as sharp and snapping, and which are quite unknown to the neighbouring nations. Another peculiarity consists in the frequent occurrence of certain lingual sounds, which in a measure may be represented bydsandts.Golo WomanGolo Woman.Escorted by the controller of the Seriba I made an inspection of all the neighbouring hamlets, and observed that the style of the Golo architecture was far more like that of the Niam-niam than that of the Bongo. The roofs of the huts projected far beyond the clay-walls, and were supportedon light posts which formed a colonnade, the walls themselves being whitewashed with hyæna-dung.The flora of the bush is distinguished by large numbers ofEuphorbia venenifica, which is only sporadically represented in this district, and a tree of a type which is rare in the southern parts of Darfoor and Kordofan and in the Western and Central Soudan, theEriodendron anfractuosum, being in fact the “cotton tree” of the colonist, was planted near the Seribas for its ornamental qualities. It is called “ruhm” by the Foorians, and is chiefly remarkable for the verticillate arrangement of its branches, separating the crown of the tree into divisions distinct from each other, like an araucaria—​a peculiarity that results in its being resorted to by the poor heathen negroes of Baghirmy, when they are on the look-out for a place of refuge from the bands of slave-hunters: large conical prickles of an immense thickness cover the stem, almost like the clusters of barnacles on a log of wood that has been exposed to the influence of the sea.MEETING AN OLD FRIEND.Just as I was on the point of leaving the Seriba of Idrees Wod Defter, my old friend Mohammed Aboo Sammat arrived. He came in the train of a large party of Bongo who were conveying corn to the place, and as, like myself, he was on his way to the Egyptian camp, we joined company and started without further delay to the west.Half a league beyond the Seriba we left the cultivated land and re-entered the forest wilderness near the village of the Golo chief Kaza. Far and wide the fields were sown with sweet potatoes, and dokhn corn was extensively cultivated. In the village of Kaza we noticed several of the peculiar corn-magazines upon the construction of which the Golo spend so much care. They are at once bold and graceful in design. The actual receptacle for the corn is made of clay and is in the form of a goblet; it is covered with a conical roof of straw, which serves as a movable lid; to protect it from the ravages of rats it is mounted on a shortsubstantial pedestal, that is supported at the base by stakes arranged as a series of flying buttresses. Altogether the structure is very symmetrical; and the clay is worked into tasteful graduated mouldings that add considerably to the general finish of the whole. The dwelling huts of the Golo also display peculiarities in their style of building, and bear evident marks of being erected with unusual care and labour.Corn-magazineCorn-magazine of the Golo.The Seriba we had just quitted was situated on the watershed between the Kooroo and the Pongo. We crossed the last stream in the Pongo system just beyond Kaza’s hamlets; it was called the Abbuloh, and was now thirty-five feet wide and two feet deep. Farther on the path gradually rose through a shady wood until we reached an eminence strewn over with blocks of gneiss; then descending, still through woods, we came to a copious brook of about the same dimension as the Abbuloh. This was the Bombatta, which flowed in a north-western direction and joined the Kooroo. The next brook, the Abeela, moved in the same direction, and was composed of a connected series of deep basins. Two more rivulets of the same character followed, the second of which, named the Ngoddoo, flowed past a flat bare elevation of gneiss and joined the Kooroo only a short distance to the west. Amongst the autumn flora of this region the Hydralia was very conspicuous, its brilliant sky-blue blossoms blending with the grass so as to form a charming carpet over the depressions of the brooks.THE BAHR-EL-KOOROO.An hour after crossing the Ngoddoo we arrived at the bank of the Bahr-el-Kooroo, as this important affluent of the Bahr-el-Arab is called by the Mohammedan settlers; the name is probably borrowed from the Baggara Arabs, as amongst the Golo (whose territory it divides from that of the Kredy on the west) it is sometimes called the Mony, and sometimes the Worry; by the Sehre it is called the Wee. At the place of our transit it was flowing towards the N.N.W., and the current was rather rapid. The entire breadth of the bed was between ninety and a hundred feet, but of this only sixty feet was covered with water, the depth of which nowhere exceeded two feet. At one spot the river flowed over blocks and layers of gneiss that were overgrown with mossy Tristichæ. The banks stood fifteen feet high, and although there were woods on either side that grew right down to the water, many indications remained of their being subject to a periodical inundation: a canoe left high up on the dry ground was an evidence how full of water the river must be during the rainy season.We kept continually meeting small companies of slave traders, mounted on oxen or on donkeys and having their living merchandise in their train.The long tracts of one species of forest-tree reminded me very much of the masses of the alder-like Vatica on the Tondy. Beyond the west bank of the river the path led up the steep side of a valley, and the level of the soil rapidly increased. Then we came to a series of ruts like deep ditches, some quite dry and some still filled with running water. We counted six of these before reaching the Beesh, or Khor-el-Rennem, which is an affluent of the Beery and the largest of the three tributaries of the Babr-el-Arab, which I had the opportunity of seeing.The Khor-el-Rennem, or goats’ brook, received its name from the circumstance that once, during the period of the annual rains, a whole herd of goats had made an attempt tocross the stream and had all been drowned in the rushing flood. It was shut in by trees and bushes of many kinds, and these cast a gloomy shade over the chasm which was worn by the waters; it was now only a foot deep and fifteen feet wide.Here, again, the land on the western shore rose suddenly like a wall, a peculiarity in the topography of the country that testified to the continual increase of its level above the sea.Two easy leagues forward, generally over cultivated country and past several hamlets belonging to the Kredy tribe, the Nduggo, and I reached what I designed should be my resting-place for awhile at Seebehr’s Seriba, which was also the Egyptian camp. The distance of seventy miles from the Pongo had been accomplished in four days. By this time I had become quite accustomed to the habit of counting my steps. I had become my own “perambulator,” and could not help thinking, as I marched along, of Xenophon and hisparasangsin the expedition of the Greeks. One day of our ordinary marching would accomplish about four or five parasangs.SEEBEHR’S SERIBA.Seebehr’s Seriba was 2282 feet above the level of the sea, 464 feet higher than Bizelly’s Seriba on the Ghetty, and 737 feet higher than Ghattas’s chief settlement. There was but little observable change in the character of the vegetation; few new plants appeared, and almost the only difference was that the forests had apparently become more dense. But however little the gradual elevation of the land might affect the vegetation, yet the hydrographical condition of the country very plainly attested a complete alteration in the nature of the soil. Although our present latitude was 8° N., the general aspect that came under the observation of a traveller was almost identical with what he would see between latitude 6° and latitude 5° in passing southwards from Bongoland to the Niam-niam.Immediately after crossing the Pongo we quitted the soft absorbent soil, and entered upon a region so prolific in springs that, all the year round, every rivulet, brook, and trench, and even the smallest fissure in the earth, is full of water, and that of the brightest and purest quality. Between the Pongo and Seebehr’s Seriba we had crossed no less than twenty brooks and two rivers of considerable magnitude. Just as had been the case in the Niam-niam lands, water trickled from every crevice and found an outlet on every slope, whilst in the low-lying country of the Dyoor and Bongo, on the edge of the red swamp-ore, where chasms and watercourses are quite as abundant, no springs ever break forth during the winter months, and the half-dry beds are supplied by no other water than what has been left from the previous Khareef.This circumstance seems in a certain degree to illustrate the conformation of the south-western side of the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin; for the general direction of all the streams that contribute to its volume would be at right angles to the lines of the terraces that rise one above the other at various levels above the sea.The Seriba was enclosed by a palisade 200 feet square; hundreds of farmsteads and groups of huts were scattered round, extending far away along the eastern slope of a deep depression which was traversed in the direction of the north-west by a brook that was fed by numerous springs. The whole place, in all its leading features, had the aspect of a town in the Soudan, and vividly reminded me of Matamma, the great market town in Gallabat, where all the inland trade with Abyssinia is transacted. To establishments of this magnitude the natives give the name of “Dehm,”[70]which is, in fact, an equivalent for “a town.” The heights to the eastof the place were more important than those immediately bordering on the depression, and in the N.N.E. very high ground was visible in the distance. Towards the west the country sloped downwards for a couple of leagues to the river Beery, which, it has been mentioned, is an important tributary of the Bahr-el-Arab.The Egyptian troops were encamped at the southern extremity of the settlement, and were under the command of the Vokeel-el-urda, Ahmed Aga, who had been the lieutenant of the late Sandjak. The black swindler, Hellali, was still kept in confinement, his company of soldiers being treated as prisoners of war and placed under the surveillance of the other troops in a section of the camp allotted to the purpose. Great scarcity of provisions prevailed, for, in addition to the troops, the population had been augmented by the arrival of many hundreds of slave-dealers from Kordofan. Immediately on receiving information of the schemes that were being plotted against his copper-mines by the Egyptian Government, Husseïn, the Sultan of Darfoor, had prohibited all intercourse between his own frontiers and the Seribas of the Khartoomers; consequently the traders from Aboo Harras, in Kordofan, found themselves obliged to take a longer and more dangerous route across the steppes of the predatory Baggara; but, in spite of every difficulty, the presence of the Government troops offered such an attraction that the number of the traders was just doubled. They were enticed by the hope of carrying on a lucrative business with the avaricious Turkish soldiers, whose influential position gave them opportunities that were specially advantageous for making high profits; but besides this, the attempt, however abortive, of the Government authorities in Khartoom to suppress the slave-trade along the Nile had had the effect of driving up the traffic in the upper countries to such a premium that the dealers were spurred on to fresh energy. Since the last rainy season upwards of 2000 small slavedealershad arrived at the Seriba, and others were still expected.[71]All these people, like the troops, lived upon Seebehr’s corn-stores, and thus provisions became so scarce that they could hardly be purchased for their own weight in copper, which, with the exception of slaves, was the solitary medium of exchange.EGYPTIAN TROOPS.It might not unnaturally have been expected that the Egyptian troops would have taken up their position in the richest and most prolific of the corn-lands; but instead of this they had quartered themselves on the extreme limit of the Seribas in the Bahr-el-Ghazal district. The avowed reason for this was that they might be better able to overlook the approaches to the copper-mines of Darfoor, but the real motive was in order that they might be nearer the fountain-head of the slave-trade and in direct communication with the northern territories, from which the main supply of living merchandise was obtained. I have already drawn attention to the impossibility of raising the contributions of corn required by the Egyptian commander, and I now became a personal witness of the unreasonableness of his demands; he appeared to have no other object than to exhaust the land already impoverished by the slave-trade, and in true Turkish fashion he set to work to involve all that remained in utter ruin.In point of fact, however, it must be owned that it was a matter of considerable difficulty (after the bloody conflict that had resulted from Hellali’s compulsory levies) for Ahmed Aga to raise the necessary supplies for the coming Khareef; but he made his requisitions in the most unfair way; his partiality was extreme, for while he exempted some Seribas from any contribution at all, he imposed upon others a demand for a double supply. My friend Mohammed was one of the oppressed. He had been called upon tofurnish fifty ardebs of corn, a quantity corresponding to the burdens of 150 to 170 bearers, and not only was his Seriba at Sabby at a distance of seventeen days’ journey from this spot, but his corn-magazines were still another four days’ journey farther on, so that the mere maintenance of the bearers for three weeks would take thirty ardebs more. Mohammed, in truth, had not sufficient corn of his own to meet the demand of the Divan, and would be reduced to the necessity, in order to make up what was deficient, of purchasing at famine prices from other Seribas which already were well-nigh exhausted.I took upon myself to intercede with the Aga, but to no purpose; he was utterly inflexible, and, not content with insisting upon his original demand, inflicted a heavy fine for the delay in the payment of the tribute, by exacting a contribution of 100 ardebs instead of fifty. But what irritated me more than anything else was the barefaced iniquity with which he backed up Shereefee in his refusal to make any compensation to Mohammed for the outrage, no better than a highway robbery, which he had perpetrated upon him, whilst at the same time he pretended to upbraid Mohammed for what he called his implacability. The solution of the matter was very easy. Shereefee had bribed Ahmed Aga with a lavish present of slaves, and that was a gift as acceptable as cash, just because they were a recognised medium of currency.Notwithstanding the crowd of human beings thus aggregated together, the bill of health, as far as it was influenced by the climate, was perfectly satisfactory. There were, of course, occasional cases of hereditary or insidious disease; but even amongst the slaves, closely packed as they were, the mortality was inconsiderable, and the human bones that lay scattered about were comparatively fewer than what I had grown accustomed to notice in other places. The effeminate Turkish soldiers, however, grumbled excessively at their position; they besieged me with petitions that I would notonly represent their misery to the Governor-General in the strongest terms, but that I would do my utmost to convince the authorities that neither profit nor glory could be gained from an enterprise which was exposing their lives to so much peril. “Do this,” they said, “and you will be doing us one of the greatest favours that it is in the power of mortal man to confer, and the blessing of Allah be with you!”TURKS IN CENTRAL AFRICA.Certain it is that these Turks, fit for nothing better than to lounge about on a divan, were the most unsuitable beings imaginable ever to have been sent on an expedition into the wilds of Central Africa. A year of their ordeal had scarcely passed, and already their complaints were piteous enough to melt a heart of stone; they seemed helpless as babes, and I verily believe that had it not been for the Nubians they would have been cheated and trampled on and reduced to the direst necessities in this land of solitude and starvation. They were all indifferent walkers; they could not endure the food of the country; they sorely missed their “schnaps;” they were aggrieved at the loss of their wheat-flour and their rice, and did not understand going without their habitual luxuries. It was indeed a kind of set-off against all this that they could be as indolent as they pleased. There was nothing to do, and nothing they did; they did not plant out a single plot of maize, they did not lay out a kitchen-garden of the simplest kind; but, loitering about from morning till night, they kept up their unfailing growls of discontent, dealing out their invectives against the “wretched” land and its “wretched” people. No wonder they complained ofennui. Divest a Turk of his fine clothes, his formal etiquette, his measured speech, and his little bit of honour which may be described as “l’extérieur de la vertu et l’élégance des vices,” and little remains to elevate him above a Nubian of the worst class; nevertheless, the mutual antipathy that existed between the Turks and the Nubians was very marked,and verified the proverb that “Arabs’ blood and Turks’ blood will never boil together.”The remarkably large contingent of Gellahbas that chanced to be within the place gave the dirty crowds of men, such as are more or less to be invariably found in every Seriba, a more motley aspect than usual, and altogether the Dehm offered a deplorable contrast to the freshness of the wilderness that we had so long and so recently been traversing. The hawkers of living human flesh and blood, unwashed and ragged, squatted in the open places keeping their eye upon their plunder, eager as vultures in the desert around the carcase of a camel. Their harsh voices as they shouted out their blasphemous prayers; the drunken indolence and torpor of the loafing Turks; the idle, vicious crowds of men infested with loathsome scabs and syphilitic sores; the reeking filthy exhalations that rose from every quarter—​all combined to make the place supremely disgusting. Turn where I would, it was ever the same; there was the recurrence of sights, sounds, and smells so revolting that they could not do otherwise than fill the senses with the most sickening abhorrence.Such were my impressions as I made my entry into the Dehm Nduggo, as the settlement is called from the Kredy tribe with which the neighbourhood is populated. The first consideration I had to make for myself was whether I would become the guest of the Turks or of the Nubians; I had to choose whether I would sue for hospitality at the hands of Seebehr or of the Turkish Aga. After due deliberation I made up my mind to apply to Seebehr, for as the Turks had taken the smaller share in the affair with Hellali, I concluded that they constituted the less powerful element, and, in truth, they were themselves dependent upon Seebehr’s liberality. But what perhaps influenced me still more was that my firman from the Government had been lost in the fire, and that consequently I was lacking in credentials tomake any formal and authoritative demands; and I did not wish to be at the mercy of the commander. As it was, Ahmed Aga did not even fulfil the stipulations that had been made in my favour by the Government in Khartoom, and all that I could get out of him was a supply of good writing-paper to enable me to go on with my sketching.Amongst the effects of Kurshook Ali, on which I had set my hopes, I could discover nothing that would be of the least service to me; his successor had long since, in true Ottoman fashion, disposed of everything that could be turned to account, a proceeding that subsequently involved him in a lawsuit with the son of the deceased Sandjak.SEEBEHR’S COURT.Meanwhile I was most kindly received by Seebehr, and as long as I remained in the Seriba I had not the faintest cause of complaint. He was himself in a debilitated state of health; the wound that he had received in the late fray had proved very dangerous, the bullet having completely penetrated the ankle-bone. The only means employed for healing the wound was repeated syringing with pure olive-oil, a remedy which, though slow, had been efficacious; for when I saw him, after some weeks had elapsed since the casualty, the injury was all but cured.Seebehr[72]had surrounded himself with a court that was little less than princely in its details. A group of large well-built square huts, enclosed by tall hedges, composed the private residence; within these were various state apartments, before which armed sentries kept guard by day and night. Special rooms, provided with carpeted divans, were reserved as ante-chambers, and into these all visitors were conducted by richly-dressed slaves, who served them with coffee, sherbet, and tchibouks. The regal aspect of these halls of state was increased by the introduction of some lions, secured, as may be supposed, by sufficiently strong andmassive chains. Behind a large curtain in the innermost hut was placed the invalid couch of Seebehr. Attendants were close at hand to attend to his wants, and a company of Fakis sat on the divan outside the curtain and murmured their never-ending prayers. In spite of his weakness and his suffering he was ever receiving a stream of visitors, who had something to say to “the Sheikh,” as he was commonly called. I often paid him a visit, and, to my surprise at first, was accommodated with a chair by the side of his bed. He repeatedly bewailed the helplessness of his condition, saying how vexed he was at being unable personally to provide for my requirements, adding that if he had been well, he should have had the greatest pleasure in escorting me over his lands. It was a great relief to my mind that he did not apply to me for surgical advice. I was glad to encourage him by my approbation of the remedy he was using, which, if it possessed no particular virtue, had at least the recommendation of being perfectly harmless.A draft that I made on my account at Khartoom was duly honoured, and I obtained a hundredweight of copper from Seebehr’s stores; this I employed without delay as cash, and purchased soap, coffee, and a variety of small articles from the hawking hangers-on of the slave-traders, as well as a large supply of cartridge-paper for the preservation of my botanical specimens.The greatest service, however, that Seebehr afforded me was in providing me with boots and shoes of European make; no acquisition was to be appreciated higher than this; and in finding myself fresh and well-shod I felt myself renovated to start again upon my wanderings with redoubled vigour. None but those who have been in my condition can comprehend the pleasure with which I hailed the sight of the most trivial and ordinary articles. Once again I was in possession of a comb, some pipe-bowls, and lucifers. As I was not in the least inclined to forego my smoking while on the march, Ihad been obliged, in order to get a light for my tobacco, to make one of my people carry a blazing firebrand throughout the recent journey.IBRAHIM EFFENDI.No sooner was I installed in the huts allotted to me than I received a succession of visitors; some of them crossed my threshold from mere idle curiosity, whilst others came either with some vague hope of profit or from some innate love of intrigue. I was honoured by a call from the great Zelim, Ali Aboo Amoory’s chief controller, who came to express his hope that I had been satisfied with my reception in his Seriba, which I had visited during his absence. Then I made the acquaintance of some of the more important slave-traders, who had long been settled in the place and who came burning with curiosity to know the real object of my journey. But the most remarkable of all my visitors was a certain Ibrahim Effendi, who held the office of head clerk and accountant in the Egyptian camp. His life had been one unbroken series of criminal proceedings, and he had been guilty of frauds and swindling transactions to an extent that was absolutely incredible. Originally a subordinate in one of the departments of the Egyptian Ministry he had, during Said Pasha’s Government, forged the Viceregal seal and attached it to a document professing to appoint him to the command of a regiment that was to be formed in Upper Egypt, and to prescribe that the local government there should defray all the expenses of levying and equipping the troops. This document he had the audacity to present first with his own hands to the governor of the province, and then forthwith he proceeded to present himself in the Upper Egyptian town as the colonel of the new regiment. Only those who are acquainted with the disorder and despotism that prevailed in every branch of the Administration during the lifetime of that Viceroy could believe that such a deception would be practicable; but I am in a position positively to assert that the fraudulent artifice did really fora while succeed. Two months afterwards, the troops having meanwhile been embodied, the Viceroy happened to make an excursion up the Nile, and seeing a great many soldiers on its banks, inquired the number of their regiment and why they were there. His astonishment was unbounded when he was told of a regiment of whose existence he had never previously heard. Ibrahim was summoned at once. Throwing himself at the Viceroy’s feet, the culprit colonel confessed his guilt and begged for mercy. The good-natured Said, who never suffered himself to lose his temper, far less to go into a rage, merely sentenced him to a few years’ banishment and imprisonment in Khartoom. As soon as Effendi had completed his term of punishment and regained his liberty, he started afresh as clerk to some of the Soudan authorities; but his habits of fraud and embezzlement were as strong as ever, and he was caught in the act of decamping with the cash-box, and was this time banished to Fashoda, on the White Nile, as being the safest place for dangerous characters of his stamp. After he had been here for several years our friend managed to excite the compassion of Kurshook Ali, who was passing through the place, and was induced to give him his present post of head clerk to his division of the Government troops. This appointment brought Effendi to the district of the Gazelle.Well versed as he was in the ways of the world, Effendi, by his wit and versatility, seemed to have the power of winning every heart. His position here in the Egyptian camp offered only too wide a scope for his love of intrigue. He had played an important part in the affair with Hellali, having doubtless been at the bottom of the stroke of policy that had reconciled Seebehr to the Turkish soldiers by bringing the hated Hellali to chains and to the yoke of the sheba. Probably he was again bidding for the command of come troops, and I am bound to confess that he seemed in afair way of being able before long to gratify his old predilection for military organisation.DAR FERTEET.The uninhabited wilderness stretching to the west of the Pongo, a district long known to the inhabitants of Darfoor and Kordofan under the name of Dar Ferteet,[73]represents one of the oldest domains of the slave-trade, and at the present day, as far as regards its aboriginal population, presents to the eye of a traveller the aspect of what may be described as “a sold-out land.” Only within the last fifteen years have the Khartoom trading-companies penetrated into the district watered by the Gazelle, but long before that numbers of slave-dealers had already formed settlements in Dar Ferteet, then as now streaming into the country from Darfoor and Kordofan accompanied by hundreds of armed men, and coming, year after year, in the winter months so as to accomplish their business and get back to their homes before the rainy season again set in. Some of them, however, did not return, but remained permanently in the land, and, under the sanction of the more influential chieftains, founded large establishments (Dehms) to serve as marts ordepôtsfor their black merchandise. As soon as the ivory-traders, with their enormous armed bands, made their appearance in the country, the Gellahbas received them with open arms; and the Nubians, in order to provide for the storing of their ivory and ammunition, forthwith combined their Seribas with the Dehms already established, so that in the course of time these places assumed the appearance of the market towns of the Soudan. The Gellahbas by remaining in their old quarters reaped a twofold advantage: in the first place, the large contingents of armed men thatwere now introduced into the country relieved them from the necessity of maintaining troops of their own; and, secondly, they were exonerated from the heavy imposts that they had been compelled to pay to the native Kredy chieftains, as these were very speedily reduced by the Nubians to the subordinate position of mere sheikhs or local overseers of the natives. In the course of my tour through Dar Ferteet I became acquainted with five of these towns, which represented so many centres of the slave-trade in this part of the country.But although the various Khartoom companies who had thus taken up their quarters in the Dehms sent out expeditions every year to the remotest of the Kredy tribes in the west, and even penetrated beyond them to the Niam-niam in the south-west, it did not take them very long to discover that the annual produce of ivory was altogether inadequate to defray the expenses of equipping and maintaining their armed force. Finding, however, that the region offered every facility for the sale of slaves, they began gradually to introduce this unrighteous traffic into their commercial dealings, until at length it became, if not absolutely the prime, certainly one of the leading objects of their expeditions; thus the people whom the professional Gellahbas had at first hailed as friends grew up, ere long, to be their most formidable rivals. For example, Seebehr Rahama himself, who had to maintain a fighting force of a thousand men on his territories, had, as the result of his ivory expedition in the previous year, gained no more than 300 loads or 120 cwt., a quantity which realised but little over 2300l.at Khartoom; but at the same time he sent probably as many as 1800 slaves direct to Kordofan, there to be disposed of on his own account.Ethnographically considered, Dar Ferteet presented a wondrous medley. Perhaps nowhere else, in an area so limited, could there be found such a conglomeration of therepresentatives of different races as upon the cultivated tracts in the environs of the Dehms: they were evidently the miserable remnants of an unceasing work of destruction. As we have already observed, the neighbours of the Bongo upon the west were the Golo and the Sehre, who combine together and have their homes in common. Beyond them, still farther to the west, are the Kredy. These Kredy do not seem to be limited to any particular district, but like blades of any one particular species of grass, crop up every now and then, quite at haphazard, as it were, amongst the other species in detached groups. The tribes which predominate, or at any rate those which I had the most frequent opportunities of observing, were the Nduggo, who were settled around Seebehr’s Dehm; the Bia, who were settled all about Dehm Gudyoo; and the Yongbongo, who occupied the region between the two.THE KREDY.Of all the people of the Bahr-el-Ghazal district with whom I made acquaintance, the Kredy, I think, were the ugliest; and whether it was in consequence of their longer period of subjection, or that they were depressed by their straitened circumstances, I cannot say, but certainly they were, to my mind, very inferior in intelligence to the Golo, the Sehre, and the Bongo. In form the Kredy are thick and unwieldy, and entirely wanting in that symmetry of limb which we admire in the slim figures of those who inhabit the swampy depressions of the Gazelle; but although their limbs are strong and compact, they must not be supposed to be like the muscular and well-developed limbs of Europeans. They are like the true Niam-niam in being below an average height, and resemble them more particularly in the broad brachycephalic form of their skulls; there is, however, a very marked difference between the two races in the growth of the hair and in the shape of the eyes. Their lips are thicker and more protruding and their mouths wider than those of any other negroes that I saw throughout the whole of mytravels. Their upper incisor teeth were either filed to a point or cut away, so as to leave intervening gaps between tooth and tooth; in the lower jaw there is no mutilation, and the teeth being left intact may perhaps account for their language being more articulate than any other in this part of Africa, although, at the same time, it bears but the slightest resemblance to any of them. Their complexion is coppery-red, the same hue that is to be noticed among the fairer individuals of the Bongo; but, like the majority of the Niam-niam, they are generally coated with such encrusted layers of dirt that they appear several shades darker than they really are: as a rule I should say that they are decidedly fairer than either the Bongo or the Niam-niam.The Kredy are bounded on the north by the Baggara-el-Homr; on the north-west, three and a half days’ journey from Dehm Nduggo, reside the tribe of the Manga, who are said to be quite distinct from the Kredy; on the west, five or six days’ journey from Dehm Gudyoo, on the Upper Bahr-el-Arab, are the abodes of the Benda, whose land has long been known to the Foorians under the name of Dar Benda, and used to be the limit of their venturesome slave-raids; still farther to the west are the settlements of the Aboo Dinga, who are said to have no affinity either with Kredy or Niam-niam. The most important of the western Kredy tribes are the Adya, Bia, and Mareh, and towards the south-west their territory is approximate to the frontier wildernesses of Mofio, the Niam-niam king. Finally, in the south, there is a mingled population of Golo and Sehre, the Sehre decidedly very much predominating in numbers.A PROJECT ABANDONED.Before I had learnt the true state of things with respect to the caravan-roads that started from Dehm Nduggo, I had indulged the hope of making my homeward journey by the overland route through Kordofan: the prospect of extending my geographical knowledge by traversing unknown lands was very attractive and almost irresistible, but when the difficultiesand drawbacks came to be reckoned up, I was compelled, however reluctantly, to relinquish a project so perilous as marching across the steppes of the Baggara, and to reconcile myself to retrace my course by the more secure and habitual highway of the Nile. I could willingly have borne the exposure to fatigue, and it might be to hunger; I could have risked the peril of being attacked, and could have stood my chance of procuring the necessary provisions and means of transport; but the extreme uncertainty as to the length of time which the slave-dealers’ caravans would take upon their northward return was of itself sufficient to deter me from my scheme; I ascertained that, whenever it suited their interest, they would linger for weeks and weeks together at various places on their way, and delays such as this were altogether inconsistent with my present purpose and convenience.In the meantime I found a very desirable opportunity of forwarding my long-written letters to Khartoom: the Turkish commander was about to remit his own despatches by a caravan, and he undertook to enclose my correspondence with his own. As a security against any injury that might happen to the mail-bag from the caravan being attacked by the marauding soldiers of the Sultan Husseïn, Ahmed Aga had provided an ordinary Arab travelling chest with a double bottom as a hiding-place for all the papers. The chest was confided to a trustworthy Faki, who happily reached the Egyptian frontier without molestation.Taking seven leagues as an average day’s march, the journey from Dehm Nduggo to Aboo Harras on the southern frontier of Kordofan is estimated to take thirty days. This statement was confirmed by various independent testimonies, and I found moreover that it corresponded with the distance of the two places as indicated by my map, a distance which, according to the position that I assigned to Dehm Nduggo, would be a trifle under 380 miles. The route first of allleads in a N.N.E. direction to Seebehr’s most northerly Seriba, Serraggo, a distance which it takes three days to accomplish. Another day’s march and the traveller reaches Dalgowna, a depôt much frequented by the slave-dealers and situated on the isolated mountain of the same name as itself, from which there is said to be an extensive view across the northern steppes. The Beery flows quite close to this Gebel Dalgowna, on its way to join the Bahr-el-Arab farther to the north-east. Three days’ journey more and the Bahr-el-Arab is attained, just at a spot were it marks off the frontiers of the Baggara-el-Homr. On account of the so-called Bedouins (known as “Arabs” in the common parlance of the Soudan) residing upon its banks, the river has received, from the traders of Kordofan and Darfoor, the designations both of the Bahr-el-Arab and the Bahr-el-Homr: that these two appellations belong to different rivers is quite a fallacy, and the mistake, which has found its way into many maps, very probably originated in travellers sometimes calling the river by one name and sometimes by the other. There is really but theoneriver. After another three days’ march Shekka is reached, the great rendezvous in the territory of the Baggara-Rizegat. It may thus be seen that the journey from Dehm Nduggo to Shekka may be accomplished in ten or twelve days, according to the length of the day’s marching.According to the statements that I gathered and have now recorded, Shekka, I should suppose, corresponds with a position described by Escayrac de Lauture in his valuable accounts of these regions, and which he distinguishes by the name of Sook-Deleyba (i.e., the market near the Deleb palms). Shekka, in fact, appears to be an important market-place and rendezvous for the itinerant slave-dealers, as well as for the Baggara Bedouins, many of whom have permanent homes there; it is the site also of the residence of Munzel, the Sheikh of the Rizegat. But it is most notorious of all asbeing the principal resort of all the great Kordofan slave-traders: being beyond the jurisdiction of Egypt and its arbitrary officials, who are in the habit of extorting a specific sum per head for hush-money on every slave that is conveyed into the country, it is a spot that enables them to transact their nefarious business free from the burdensome imposts, and to transmit their living merchandise in whatever direction may suit them, all over the provinces of the Soudan.ROUTE TO DARFOOR.The journey from Shekka to Aboo Harras, I was given to understand, would require eighteen days, and even with very long days’ marching could not be accomplished in less than fifteen days. All my informants agreed most positively in asserting that there were no streams of any magnitude to be crossed, and that even in the height of the rainy season there were no brooks nor swamps to offer any serious obstacle to travellers. There was, however, no time of the year, not even in the middle of winter, when the Bahr-el-Arab could be crossed by any other means than swimming, or by rafts constructed of grass.The caravan-roads from Dehm Nduggo to Darfoor were closed at the time of my visit. They nearly all started in a N.N.W. direction. Almost immediately after leaving the Seriba, the traveller would have to cross the Beery, and proceed for three or four leagues until he arrived at the subsidiary Seriba Deleyb; another day’s march to the north-west would bring him to one of the minor Seribas, of which the controller’s name was Soliman; and two days more would find him at a Seriba on the Gebel Mangyat, as the natives call that district. The notorious copper-mines Hofrat-el-Nahahs[74]are said to be situated six days’ journeyto the south of this region of the Manga, and to lie on the southern frontier of Darfoor. The copper is brought into the market either in the shape of clumsily-formed rings, full of angles, varying in weight from five pounds to fifty, or in long oval cakes of very imperfect casting. The price that I had to pay for the hundred rottoli (about 80 lbs.) that I obtained from Seebehr was 1500 piastres, or 75 Maria Theresa dollars, which would be represented by about £15 of English money.Seebehr had a Seriba on the frontiers of Darfoor that was in constant intercourse with this important place, and through his interest I obtained a sample of the ore of these far-famed mines. It weighed about five pounds. One half of it I handed to the Khedive of Egypt at an audience with which he honoured me; the other half I deposited in the Mineralogical Museum at Berlin. The specimen consisted of copper-pyrite and quartz, with an earthy touch of malachite, commonly called green carbonite of copper, but containing a very small quantity of the real metal.No systematic mining seems to be carried on in the “Hofrat-el-Nahahs,” and the man who brought me the sample carefully concealed in his clothes, informed me that the ore was found lying like loose rubble in the dry bed of a khor. It may be presumed that by boring galleries, or even by hewing out quarries, a large supply of the metal might be obtained without any vast expenditure of time or money, for even in the present condition of things, while the solid rock still remains intact, the yield of copper for years past has been very considerable. The Foorian copper even now takes a prominent part in the commerce of the entire Soudan; it is conveyed across Wadai to Kano in Haussa, and, according to Barth, it holds its own in the market even against that imported from Tripoli.FOOTNOTES:[64]“Kurnuk” is the term used by the Nubians and Foorians for a shed; the corresponding expression in the Soudan Arabic being “Daher-el-Tor,” literally, the back of an ox; thus “kurnuk” means generally any roof with a horizontal ridge.[65]Dr. Steudner died on the 10th of April, 1863, from an attack of fever; a few daysbefore that, in company with Heuglin, he had commenced his first journey into the interior; his object had been to reconnoitre the country to the west of the Meshera, and to find a suitable place for the accommodation of Miss Tinné’s party during the rainy season.[66]The real name of the firm is Ali-Aboo-Amoory, and it has acquired an undesirable notoriety for its fraudulent dealings with Miss Tinné’s expedition.[67]“Kulloo” is in this neighbourhood the generic name for brooks of this character.[68]This was the most westerly point that Heuglin reached in Central Africa.[69]In the dialect of the Soudan these distinctions are respectively rendered by the terms “Dar” (cultivated land) and “Akabah” (wilderness).[70]The Khartoomers have given the word Dehm an Arabic plural, “Dwehm;” and by this term they distinguish the great slave marts of the west.[71]The entire number that year rose to 2700.[72]Seebehr’s name at full length was Seebehr-Rahama-Gyimme-Abel.[73]Ferteet is the term by which the Foorians and Baggara distinguish the Kredy tribes as a nation from the Niam-niam. In a wider sense the term is applied to all the heathen nations to the south of Darfoor. In the Soudan the guinea-worm is also called Ferteet, probably because the heathen negroes act especially liable to its attacks.[74]There is much uncertainty about the exact geographical position of these famous mines. The accounts differ widely, so that I can only approximately determine the precise situation. According to Brown, Hofrat is twenty-three and a half days’ journey from Kobbeh, the capital of Darfoor, whilst according to Barth it is only eight good days’ march from Tendelti, which is a day’s journey from Kobbeh. I should imagine that it probably lies a little to the west of the position that I have assigned it in my map: of one thing I am certain—​it lies to the west of the roads to Darfoor.

Fresh wanderings, Dyoor remedy for wounds. Crocodiles in the Ghetty. Former residence of Miss Tinné. Dirt and disorder. The Baggara-Rizegat. An enraged fanatic. The Pongo. Frontiers of the Bongo and Golo. A buffalo-calf shot. Idrees Wod Defter’s Seriba. Golo dialect. Corn magazines of the Golo. The Kooroo. The goats’ brook. Increasing level of land. Seebehr’s Seriba Dehm Nduggoo. Discontent of the Turks. Visit to an invalid. Ibrahim Effendi. Establishment of the Dehms. Nubians rivals to the slave-dealers. Population of Dar Ferteet. The Kredy. Overland route to Kordofan. Shekka. Copper mines of Darfoor. Raw copper.

Fresh wanderings, Dyoor remedy for wounds. Crocodiles in the Ghetty. Former residence of Miss Tinné. Dirt and disorder. The Baggara-Rizegat. An enraged fanatic. The Pongo. Frontiers of the Bongo and Golo. A buffalo-calf shot. Idrees Wod Defter’s Seriba. Golo dialect. Corn magazines of the Golo. The Kooroo. The goats’ brook. Increasing level of land. Seebehr’s Seriba Dehm Nduggoo. Discontent of the Turks. Visit to an invalid. Ibrahim Effendi. Establishment of the Dehms. Nubians rivals to the slave-dealers. Population of Dar Ferteet. The Kredy. Overland route to Kordofan. Shekka. Copper mines of Darfoor. Raw copper.

Thethird New Year’s Day that I passed on African soil now dawned, and it was precisely on the 1st of January, 1871, that I found myself starting off upon my long-projected tour to the west. I left my little Tikkitikki to the temporary guardianship of Khalil, and set out accompanied by two of my servants, the negro lads, and the few bearers that were necessary to carry the little remnant of my property.

My scheme was first of all to pay a visit to Bizelly’s Seriba, thirty-two miles to the north-west, the same that had been Miss Tinné’s headquarters seven years previously; and as the controller happened to be passing through Kurshook Ali’s Seriba on his return from a business tour, I was glad to avail myself of the chance of travelling in company with one who was well acquainted with the country. The name of this man was Bakhit Yussuf; he was a negro by birth, and had formerly been in the service of Kleincznick, a Hungarian,who at the time of Miss Tinné’s expedition had owned a Seriba in the Kozanga mountains, and who by the shameless way in which he had prosecuted the slave-trade, had fallen under the censure of the Khartoom authorities.

We crossed the Wow at the same wooded spot as we had done in April 1869. This river, the Nyenahm of the Dyoor, the Herey of the Bongo, during the rainy season has a depth of fourteen to sixteen feet without ever overflowing its banks; even at this date the bed of the noble forest-stream was still quite covered with water, the depth of which near the banks was three or four feet, decreasing in the middle of the current to less than two feet. The varying depth, however, did not affect the velocity, which was uniform throughout and about ninety-eight feet a minute. The width of the Wow I found by careful measurement to be 132 feet.

AN UNCOURTEOUS VOKEEL.

Beyond the river we passed through cultivated lands, leaving Agahd’s chief Seriba on our left; we then crossed a low range of hills stretching towards the north-east, and brought our day’s march to an end in the hamlet of a Dyoor chief named Dimmoh, where we encamped for the night. I had purposely avoided entering the Seriba Wow, although it was quite within reach, my reason being that I had recently been aggrieved by the behaviour of the acting Vokeel, one of the few men of Turkish origin who had settled in the land. A short time previously I had despatched a document of considerable importance to myself, containing a narrative of my late misfortunes, directing it to the commander of the Egyptian camp, so that through him it might be put on the right track for Europe,viâKordofan; but although the controllers of all the other Seribas had readily passed on my despatch from place to place by means of special messengers, this Turkish Vokeel had sent it back to me with the paltry excuse that he had received no instructions from myself personally as to where he should forward it. I was thus compelledto be the bearer of my own papers as far as the Egyptian camp in Seebehr’s Seriba, whence I hoped to be able to send them on by one of the slave caravans that made the place their starting-point.

Our night-camp afforded me an opportunity of renewing my familiarity with the idyllic village life of the Dyoor. The sorghum harvest had long been gathered in, and the dokhn had been safely stored in the great urn-like bins that were so essential a fixture in every hut; a second crop was now in course of being housed, consisting of the kindy (Hyptis) that springs up between the stubble, many of the women being engaged in the task, which is very tedious, of cleansing the poppy-like seeds. About the fields were lying many of those strange cylinder-shaped melons, which appear to be peculiar to the Dyoor, with their rind like that of the bottle-gourd and as hard as wood. There were also large numbers of the fleshy variegated calyces of the Sabdariffa dried all ready for storing, a condition in which they retain their pungency, and serve the purpose of giving the soups of the natives an acid flavour almost as sharp as vinegar.

Several of the old men and women that I saw looked very decrepit; a circumstance which I mention, because amongst the Bongo, slaves to heathen superstition as they are, I never noticed a single individual whose hair was grey.

I was a witness here of what struck me as a very singular method of treating wounds. A boy’s knee had been grazed, and I saw a woman apply some of the acrid juice of theModecca abyssinica. Forskal, who discovered the plant in Arabia, where it goes by the name of “Aden,” says that pulverized and taken internally it causes a swelling of the limbs that does not fail to terminate fatally. The Dyoor woman scraped the rind off a piece of the stem, and having expressed the juice from the soft pulp spread it upon a damp leaf; this was laid as a plaster upon the wound and covered with another leaf. I could not help regretting thattime did not allow me to ascertain the efficiency of the operation.

The nights were calm and beautifully starlight, so that our rest in the open air was very enjoyable, and we started off each morning before sunrise with our energies thoroughly requickened.

THE HAMLETS OF WOLL.

After going awhile uphill over some rocky ground we came to a declivity of nearly a hundred feet; at the bottom of this we had to cross a wide swampy depression covered with the Terminalia forests that so often characterise such localities. The holes and hollows, although they were now completely dry, gave ample testimony as to what must be the number of the pools that would obstruct the path during the height of the rainy season. In a short time we reached the hamlets of a Dyoor chief named Woll, that were scattered about an open plain covered with cultivated fields; this was the frontier of Bizelly’s territory. A tree something like an acacia, theEntada sudanica, remarkable for its pods, a foot long and thin as paper, and breaking into numbers of pieces when ripe, was the chief feature in the bush-forests of the environs, although it is a tree which is generally rare in the country.

The bearers with whom Khalil had supplied me were here dismissed, their place being taken by others who had come up at the orders of Bakhit Yussuf. Woll’s people were very busy collecting their iron-ore and putting their smelting-furnaces into readiness for use. In the vicinity of the village there was an iron-mine similar to that near Kurshook Ali’s Seriba.

Over rocky soil and through tracts of dense bushwood we marched on, until in front of us we saw a kind of valley-plateau, bare of trees, apparently shut in on the farther side by an eminence extending towards the north-east, which is the general direction of the territory of the Dyoor in this district. Here we entered a little Seriba of Bizelly’s, knownby the name of Kurnuk,[64]where we were well entertained during the midday hours.

In the afternoon we set off again, and mounted the wooded height covered with great tracts of the Göll tree (Prosopis), which is noticeable for producing a fruit very like the St. John’s bread. Then again descending, we came to the dried-up bed of a watercourse that was closely overhung with bushes. Beyond this were various cultivated plots, dotted here and there with huts; and we next entered a splendid forest of lofty Humboldtiæ, which by its extent and denseness reminded me of our own European woods. Our path was shaded by these noble trees until we reached the Ghetty, or “Little Wow,” six miles above the spot where Dr. Steudner lies buried on its bank.

This tributary of the Dyoor was about as large as the Molmul near Aboo Guroon’s Seriba; its bed was between fifty and sixty feet wide; its banks were ten feet high. At present it was little more than a narrow ditch, with no perceptible motion in its waters, but I was told that lower down it widened out into pools that were always full of water. But insignificant as the Ghetty looked, it was large enough to be the resort of crocodiles so daring and voracious that they were the terror of the neighbourhood, the rapacity of the creatures very probably arising from a prevalent scarcity of fish. A few weeks previously, when the stream was full to the top of its banks, a Dyoor boy as he was swimming across had been snapped at by one of these ravenous Saurians and had never been seen again. It is surprising in the dry season, into what tiny pools and puddles the crocodile will make its way, and where, buried in the miry clay, it will find a sufficiently commodious home. In comparison with thesepools the tanks with which the specimens in the aquariums of our zoological gardens are provided must be fully if not superfluously spacious. When kept in confinement the crocodile makes scarcely any perceptible growth; and from this circumstance of the slow increase of its bulk the inference seems necessarily to follow that the creature lives to a great age.

The Ghetty is bordered by bushes nearly identical with those which are found on the banks of all the streamlets of this land; theMorelia senegalensis, theZizygium, and theTrichilia retusamay be noted as amongst the most common.

I was told that Bizelly’s head Seriba, known amongst the Bongo as Doggaya Onduppo, was situated upon the right bank, about eight leagues to the north-west of the spot where we crossed the stream, which here forms the boundary between the Wow tribe of the Dyoor and the district populated by the Bongo. We continued to advance for another league and a half, going up a densely-wooded acclivity until at length, fairly tired out with our exertions, we entered, quite late in the evening, Bizelly’s subsidiary Seriba, called by the Bongo Doggaya-morr.

PREDECESSORS ON THE SOIL.

Here, for the first time, I found myself on what my scientific predecessors had made what to my mind was nothing less than a classic soil. Here it was that Theodor von Heuglin had resided from the 17th of April, 1863, to the 4th of January, 1864; here, or at least in an adjacent village of the Wow tribe, had Dr. Steudner[65]expired; and close in the vicinity had Miss Tinné passed through a period of wretchedness which all her wealth was powerless to prevent. Never could I leave the Seriba without being conscious thatevery shrub and every plant was a memorial of those who had been before me, for all were representatives of that hitherto unknown flora of which Heuglin had collected the first botanical data, and which Dr. Kotschy has depicted in his noble work ‘Plantæ Tinnianæ,’ partly from the drawings of Miss Tinné herself.

Within the Seriba, too, I was constantly reminded of the miserable condition to which this expedition, so comprehensive in its original design, had been reduced. The region bore every token of having an unhealthy climate. The stagnant meadow-waters and foul streams all around had all the appearance of being veritable and prolific breeding-places for fever and malaria. A great ruined tenement, now a mere lodgment for sheep and goats, marked the spot where the remains of Miss Tinné’s mother, who fell a victim to the pernicious climate, were temporarily deposited until the opportunity came for them to be removed to her distant home. A dejected fate indeed, and a miserable resting-place for one who had been reared amidst the comforts and luxuries of the highest refinement.

Before leaving Bizelly’s Seriba we received intelligence of the murder of our old friend Shol, the wealthy Dinka princess, into the details of whose personal charms and associations I have, in an earlier page, entered with some minuteness. The natives, it seems, had accused her of inviting the “Turks” into the country; and as many of the tribes in the neighbourhood had been exposed to attacks from Kurshook Ali’s troops, they determined to avenge themselves on Shol, as being a long-standing ally of the Khartoomers. Knowing that she slept alone in her hut, a troop of men belonging to the Wady (a tribe settled to the east of the Meshera) set out by night, and under pretext of having business with Kurdyook, her husband, knocked at her door. She had no sooner appeared in answer to their summons than they attacked her with deadly blows; and setting fireto all the huts drove off nearly all the cattle that was to be found in the place. This melancholy piece of news, coupled with the recent defeat of the Khartoomers by the Niam-niam, foreboded ill for the future prospects of the Seribas; by Shol’s death the vicinity of the Meshera would lose all its peaceful character, and there was no longer the possibility of solitary boats being left there in security during the season of the rains.

LONGO.

A lovely march of about six miles to the north-west, through an almost unbroken and in many places very dense bush-forest, brought us to Ali Amoory’s[66]chief Seriba, distinguished by the natives by the name of Longo. The Parkia trees were just beginning to bloom. The wonderful spectacle that these presented was quite unique; their great trusses of bright red blossoms, large as the fist and smooth as velvet, made a display that was truly gorgeous, as they depended from the long stalks which broke forth from the feathery foliage of the spreading crowns.

Another characteristic of the scenery was theBoxia salicifolia, that appeared in great abundance.

In spite of the constant traffic between the different Seribas there seemed to be no lack of game; traces of hartebeests were everywhere visible, whilst the little madoqua antelopes bounded like apparitions from bush to bush. Guinea-fowls were just as prolific as in the wildest deserts of the Niam-niam. Heuglin, no inexperienced sportsman, had certainly here chosen a remunerative ground for his zoological researches.

Our path was crossed by three watercourses, which were now for the most part dry. By their confluence these three streams formed an important tributary of the Dyoor, called the Okuloh, their separate names before their junction,reckoning from the southernmost, being respectively the Dangyah, the Matshoo, and the Minnikinyee or “fish-water;” their uniformly north-eastern direction attested the material fall in the level of the ground at the boundary between the rocky soil and the alluvial plains of the Dyoor.

Longo ranked as a first-class establishment. It contained a larger number of huts than even Ghattas’s Seriba, which it surpassed also in dirt and disorder. Every hedge was crooked, every hut stood awry, and the farmsteads were as ruined as though they had for years been abandoned to the ravages of rats and white ants. Disgusting heaps of ashes and scraps of food, piles of rotten straw, hundreds of old baskets and gourd-shells stood as high as one’s head all along the narrow alleys that parted hut from hut; whilst outside the Seriba, just at its very entrances, there were masses of mouldy rubbish, overgrown with the most noxious of fungus, that rose as high as the houses; at every step there was sure to be an accumulation of some abominable filthiness or other, such as nowhere else, I should think, even in the Mohammedan world, could be found in immediate proximity to human habitations; altogether the place presented such a dismal scene of dirt, decay, and disorder that it was enough to induce a fit of nightmare upon every one with the smallest sense of either neatness or decorum. Truly it was a wonderful specimen of domestic economy which this horde of undisciplined Nubians had thus elaborated.

The level country for a mile or more round the Seriba was occupied by the arable lands belonging to the settlement. Longo was one of the oldest establishments in the country, and the adjacent soil was no less productive than that around the Seriba of Ghattas. The Bongo villages were all situated at some distance to the west.

Amoory’s representative agent, Zelim, had formerly been a soldier, one of the Nizzam, in the Turkish service, and was a native of the wild district of Baria, in the mountains ofTaka; he was now absent from the Seriba, but had left orders that I should be hospitably entertained and that everything which his stores could furnish should be placed at my disposal. A grove of excellent plantains was close at hand, from which I obtained a bounteous supply of that luscious fruit.

MUTUAL CURIOSITY.

All the year round a considerable number of slave traders resided in the place, and were always attended by those wild sons of the steppes, the Baggara of the Rizegat, who, with their lean, fly-bitten cattle, had to camp out as well as they could in the environs of the Seriba. They had never before set eyes upon a Christian, and full of eager wonder they flocked together to survey me, keeping, however, at a distance of several yards from personal contact, probably dreading the malign influence of the “evil eye” of a Frank. Their curiosity was still further roused when they saw me drawing pictures of their cattle, and when I offered them my various sketches for their own inspection they appeared to lose much of the alarm which they had exhibited. I rose from my seat, and held up to them one picture after another; the effect was little short of magical; their uncouth tones seemed to soften into a murmur of delight, and so effectually had I succeeded in gaining their confidence that some of them were induced to sit for their own portraits. All those that I drew had fine light brown complexions, slim muscular frames, and perfectly regular features; the expression of the face might fairly be pronounced open and honest, and exhibited the strong resolution that might be expected of a warlike nation whose occupations, when not in the battle-field, were in hunting and cattle-breeding. Their profiles all formed quite a right angle; their noses failed to be aquiline, but were rounded and well-formed; the faces of the younger men were good-tempered looking, having a somewhat effeminate expression, which was still further increased by the high round forehead. All of them seemed to weartheir hair in long slender braids running in rows along the top of the head and drooping over the neck behind.

As I was pursuing my occupation, and quietly taking my series of portraits, watched intently by a hundred spectators, who stood around with open mouths which revealed an astonished admiration, my attention was all at once arrested by a commotion which was taking place just outside the circle of the admirers. An old fanatic from Darfoor was raving away and denouncing loudly what he pleased to call the iniquity of my proceedings; he professed that my pursuit was beyond all endurance, and that he was not going to countenance my presumptuous practices. I shouted to the old rascal to hold his tongue, to mind his own business, and be off, and most of the bystanders took up the same strain, some beginning to taunt and jeer the fellow with such a volley of satirical laughter that, completely discomfited, he was glad to skulk off as quickly as he could. I could not resist having a word of my own, and just as he was retiring I shouted after him, for his comfort, the native proverb, “Trust to the protection of the Almighty as to the shade of an acacia, but,” I added, “they had need be better acacias than those of your miserable land.”

On the 6th of January I resumed my progress. Taking a south-westerly direction I accomplished a good day’s march of eighteen miles and reached Damury, Amoory’s subsidiary Seriba on the River Pongo. A rocky soil covered with bush had predominated for the greater portion of the distance, the route having been perfectly level and unbroken by the smallest depression. We had crossed the beds of five brooks which were nearly dry. Taking them in order they were, the Okilleah, a mere line of stagnant puddles; the Kulloo,[67]a larger brook overhung with sizygium-bushes,and containing water as high as one’s knees; the Horroah, a dry hollow bed; the Daboddoo, with a few pools; and the Ghendoo, with holes from which the water had either dried up or drained away. All these, when supplied with water, were tributary to the Pongo, and flowed towards the north-west.

A PLANT OF HAPPY OMEN.

Midday, between the Kulloo and the Horroah, we had come upon a gigantic fig-tree (Ficus lutea), one of those memorials of the past that are so often seen in Bongoland, marking, as they do, the site of an earlier native village. The name of the place was Ngukkoo. The enormous tree had a short stem enveloped in a perfect network of aerial roots, struck downwards from the branches, whilst at the summit it spread out into a crown of foliage that under the vertical midday sun formed a shadow on the ground of which the circumference, as I proved by actual measurement, was not less than 230 feet.

During the latter portion of the march we had seen a considerable number of candelabra Euphorbiæ and Calotropis. The appearance of the Calotropis (called in Arabic “el Usher”) was indicative of a more northerly type of vegetation, as the plant is characteristic of the steppes of Nubia, Arabia, and the frontiers of India: this was the first time I had seen it in the territory of the Seribas; the “el Usher” had evidently been introduced into this part of the country by traders from the north, and the solid stems of the plants, which elsewhere are little more than shrubs, bore ample witness to the long-established traffic on this commercial highway. The explanation of the extensive diffusion of this plant may be found in the fact that the silky down that covers the seeds in their large plump pods is used as a material for stuffing cushions. In the northern steppes its appearing in sight is ever hailed by the traveller as a happy omen, as it enjoys the reputation of always having either a well or a hidden spring of fresh water in its immediate vicinity.

Damury was situated close to the right-hand bank of the Pongo, as the Bongo call this affluent of the Bahr-el-Arab. On earlier maps the river was marked as the Kozanga, but this I found to be merely the designation of a small mountainous ridge that extended for several leagues along the left bank of the river to the south-west of the Seriba. On the 17th of July, 1863, Theodor von Heuglin[68]had visited the spot for the purpose of selecting a dry and rocky eminence in the woods where a camp might be erected for the headquarters of Miss Tinné’s expedition. If this scheme had been carried into practice the melancholy sacrifice of life that resulted from the unwholesome atmosphere of Bizelly’s Seriba might happily have been spared; but the difficulties of properly organising so large a party of travellers were insuperable, and the project of removal to that healthier resort fell to the ground.

The transitoriness which seems to be the characteristic of all the institutions of this land prevented me from ascertaining the exact site of the dwelling-place of the deceased Bongo chief Kulanda, mentioned by Heuglin in his account of the visit he made to the place; but from the comparison of certain points of correspondence, I entertain no doubt but that my footsteps were then upon the very spot.

In its upper course through the district inhabited by the Sehre, the Pongo, as already noted, bears the name of the Djee; it flows towards the north-east, and after leaving the Bongo territory beyond Damury passes through that of the Dembo, a tribe of Shillook origin related to the Dyoor: on this account the Khartoomers call it the Bahr-el-Dembo.

The Dembo are under the jurisdiction of Ali Amoory, whose territories extend far beyond the river to the north-west, and join the country of the Baggara-el-Homr, his most remote Seribas being on the Gebbel Marra, in the locality ofa negro tribe called the Bambirry, probably also a branch of the great Shillook family; but it should be stated that, according to some accounts, these Bambirry are true Zandey Niam-niam who have immigrated from the south and settled in their present quarters.

THE RIVER PONGO.

The scenery about Damury was extremely like that around Awoory in the Mittoo country; in fact it altogether reminded me of what I had seen on my trip to the Rohl, especially as the Pongo exhibits not a few points of resemblance to that river. Damury is built on rising rocky ground, thickly covered with wood, and close to the eastern or right-hand bank of the river. The slopes that enclosed the river-bed were about fifteen feet in depth, and between them and the actual stream there was, on either side, a strip of soil subject to inundation during the rainy season and now broken up with numerous pools and backwaters. At this date (January 7, 1871) the water was moving sluggishly along between clay banks, some 10 feet down and 70 feet apart; but the water did not cover a breadth of more than fifty feet and was nowhere more than four feet in depth. Its velocity was the same as that of the Wow; but whilst both the Wow and the Dyoor rolled along, even at this season, in considerable volume, the Pongo was comparatively empty, and, as I saw, it must have offered a very striking contrast to its appearance during the Khareef, when no doubt it could make good its pretensions to be a river of the second class. On the other side of the Pongo there was a low tract of steppe, at least 3000 paces wide, which, of course, represented the territory subject to inundation on the left bank. I subsequently found that the entire length of the river, from its source to Damury, could not at the most exceed 200 miles, and thus became able more completely to realise the very remarkable periodic changes which occur in the condition of the stream.

In various parts of the depression the vegetation of the open steppe is replaced by close masses of stephogyne: theseform marshy clumps, and from their general habit very strongly resemble our alder-beds of the north.

Close to the Seriba a deep chasm, called Gumango, opens out into the valley of the river; it is one of the landslips, so common in this region, caused by springs washing away the ferruginous swamp-ore from below, and an inexperienced traveller might easily be led to mistake it for the bed of a periodical watercourse of considerable magnitude. It is thickly overgrown with brambles and creepers. The shrub Tinnea plays a prominent part in the underwoods all around Damury, and many of the plants that are found growing on the dry sand of the bed of the Pongo may be considered as true representatives of the flora of the black Nile-earth, and prove the hydrographical importance of the stream.

Just above the Seriba the course of the river was due east for a distance of four miles, and in pursuing our westward journey we marched along the left bank in the direction contrary to the stream until we arrived at the spot where it made its bend away from the south. Here we crossed. The sandy bed was not more than 100 feet wide, a grassy depression beyond was about 400 paces across. On the borders of this we came upon some ruined huts projecting above the grass, evidently the remains of a forsaken Seriba of Bizelly’s, which, had likewise been called Damury, after the name of the Bongo community that had had their homes in the district. The Bongo had now withdrawn beyond the right bank of the river, and thus the Pongo had been left as the boundary between the populated country and the actual wilderness.[69]With very slight deviations the remainder of our journey to Seebehr’s great Seriba was in a direction due west. The ground rose considerably, and on our left was a tall eminence of gneiss, called Ida, a northern spur of theKozanga ridge and (with regard to our present position) about 500 feet high. A deep brook, the Ooruporr, rising somewhere on the slopes of this Mount Ida, here crossed our path, the line of its banks being distinctly marked out by some specimens of the wild date-palm. A little farther on we came to a dry, deep chasm, that formed the bed of a periodic stream known as the Andimoh, which likewise descended from the hill of Ida; its banks were marked by crags of gneiss and studded with bamboos.

THE KARRA.

We passed onwards over masses of gneiss almost spherical in form, overgrown with moss-like clusters of selaginella, and reached the bed of the brook Karra, lying in its deep hollow. To this little stream the Nubians gave the name of Khor-el-Ganna, on account of the jungles of bamboo that enclose its rocky banks, which descend in successive steps so as to produce a series of cascades. The Bongo reckon the Karra as the boundary between their country and the country of the Golo; it is also considered to be the line which separates the domain of the landowner Ali Amoory from that of Idrees Wod Defter, whose Seriba is about thirty-five miles from Damury and, as nearly as possible, half way along our route thence to Seebehr’s chief settlement.

Beyond the Karra the path led over very undulated country; and we had twice to cross a brook called Ya, which, formed mainly of a series of deep basins, worked its devious way along a contracted defile. Having at length mounted a steepish eminence of red rock we appeared to bring our long ascent to an end, and commencing a gradual descent we proceeded till we reached the brook Attidoh, beside which we encamped for the night.

Large herds of buffaloes thronged the chief pools of the swampy bed, and before it became quite dark I managed to creep within range of a group of cows with their calves. The only result of my exertions was that one calf fell dead upon the spot where it was struck, all my other shotsapparently taking no effect. Half the night was spent in roasting, broiling, and drying the flesh of the young buffalo, and all my party were in great good humour.

The forests for long distances were composed exclusively of lofty Humboldtiæ, and increased in magnitude and denseness as we advanced farther amongst them; they were so fine that they might well bear comparison with any of the best wooded districts of the Niam-niam. We crossed a half-dry khor (or stream-channel) called the Ngoory, and shortly afterwards a marshy brook, with a considerable supply of water, called the Akumunah; both of these joined the Mongono, of which the bed at the place where we crossed it was so dry that it appeared only like a tract of sand, seventy feet wide; but by turning up the loose sand to the depth of six inches, a copious stream of clear water was discovered to be running on its subterranean way over a gravelly bottom. In the rainy season the Mongono assumes quite a river-like appearance, for I discovered traces of important backwaters that had been left by its inundation, and the banks that bounded its sandy bed were not much less than eight feet high.

A little rose-coloured gentian, the Causcora, characterises the slopes of the banks of this streamlet, growing just in the same luxuriant manner as the kindred species that adorn the sides of our own brooks. The frequent appearance of the Abyssinian Protea convinced me that the elevation of the ground was greater than what we had left behind us: as matter of fact we were at an average height of 2500 feet above the level of the sea.

The Yow-Yow, a narrow sort of trench, made up of a series of deep pools, next intersected our path. On the other side of this I mounted a crag of gneiss, whence I obtained an extensive view towards the west, and observed an elevated line of woods stretched out with the precision of a wall from S.S.W. to N.N.E. The elevation was beyond the Athena, a brookthat we reached after first crossing two other but minor streams. The bed of the Athena was formed of sand and gravel; although it was dry, with the exception of some occasional water-pools that had not failed, it was fifty feet in width. The steepness of the banks demonstrated that in the rainy season they enclosed what would be allowed to be a considerable river. Two more brooks with deep beds had still to be crossed, and then we entered upon the cultivated land adjacent to Idrees Wod Defter’s Seriba. Two miles more, along a continuous ascent, brought us to the Seriba itself.

IDREES WOD DEFTER.

Idrees Wod Defter was a partner in Agahd’s firm. His Seriba had been built about three years previously, and was composed of large farmsteads, shut in almost with the seclusion of monasteries by tall hedges of straw-work; they were occupied by the various great slave-traders who had settled in the country. Four huts and a large rokooba had recently been erected for the accommodation of the numerous travellers who passed through, chiefly composed of second-class traders, who, like itinerant Jews, wandered about from place to place, hawking their goods. Idrees himself resided in his Niam-niam Seribas, which, I was told, were near Mofio’s residence, seven or eight days’ journey distant. Besides this chief settlement there were two subsidiary Seribas, one about four leagues to the south-east, on the western declivity of the Kozanga hills, and another at the same distance to the south-west, the controller of which was named Abd-el-Seed. The farmsteads of the chief Seriba stood in their separate enclosures, and were not surrounded by the ordinary palisade. Close by, on the south, a little spring trickling forth from a cleft in the ground suddenly expanded into a clear rippling brook that ran merrily to the west.

The natives that served the necessary demands of the Seriba belonged to the tribe of the Golo. In manners andin general appearance they very much resemble their eastern neighbours the Bongo, although the dialects of the two tribes have very little in common. More than any other negro tongue with which I gained much familiarity, the Golo dialect seems to abound in sounds resembling the German vowelsöandü, and, like some of the South African dialects, it contains some peculiar nasal tones, which may be described as sharp and snapping, and which are quite unknown to the neighbouring nations. Another peculiarity consists in the frequent occurrence of certain lingual sounds, which in a measure may be represented bydsandts.

Golo WomanGolo Woman.

Golo Woman.

Escorted by the controller of the Seriba I made an inspection of all the neighbouring hamlets, and observed that the style of the Golo architecture was far more like that of the Niam-niam than that of the Bongo. The roofs of the huts projected far beyond the clay-walls, and were supportedon light posts which formed a colonnade, the walls themselves being whitewashed with hyæna-dung.

The flora of the bush is distinguished by large numbers ofEuphorbia venenifica, which is only sporadically represented in this district, and a tree of a type which is rare in the southern parts of Darfoor and Kordofan and in the Western and Central Soudan, theEriodendron anfractuosum, being in fact the “cotton tree” of the colonist, was planted near the Seribas for its ornamental qualities. It is called “ruhm” by the Foorians, and is chiefly remarkable for the verticillate arrangement of its branches, separating the crown of the tree into divisions distinct from each other, like an araucaria—​a peculiarity that results in its being resorted to by the poor heathen negroes of Baghirmy, when they are on the look-out for a place of refuge from the bands of slave-hunters: large conical prickles of an immense thickness cover the stem, almost like the clusters of barnacles on a log of wood that has been exposed to the influence of the sea.

MEETING AN OLD FRIEND.

Just as I was on the point of leaving the Seriba of Idrees Wod Defter, my old friend Mohammed Aboo Sammat arrived. He came in the train of a large party of Bongo who were conveying corn to the place, and as, like myself, he was on his way to the Egyptian camp, we joined company and started without further delay to the west.

Half a league beyond the Seriba we left the cultivated land and re-entered the forest wilderness near the village of the Golo chief Kaza. Far and wide the fields were sown with sweet potatoes, and dokhn corn was extensively cultivated. In the village of Kaza we noticed several of the peculiar corn-magazines upon the construction of which the Golo spend so much care. They are at once bold and graceful in design. The actual receptacle for the corn is made of clay and is in the form of a goblet; it is covered with a conical roof of straw, which serves as a movable lid; to protect it from the ravages of rats it is mounted on a shortsubstantial pedestal, that is supported at the base by stakes arranged as a series of flying buttresses. Altogether the structure is very symmetrical; and the clay is worked into tasteful graduated mouldings that add considerably to the general finish of the whole. The dwelling huts of the Golo also display peculiarities in their style of building, and bear evident marks of being erected with unusual care and labour.

Corn-magazineCorn-magazine of the Golo.

Corn-magazine of the Golo.

The Seriba we had just quitted was situated on the watershed between the Kooroo and the Pongo. We crossed the last stream in the Pongo system just beyond Kaza’s hamlets; it was called the Abbuloh, and was now thirty-five feet wide and two feet deep. Farther on the path gradually rose through a shady wood until we reached an eminence strewn over with blocks of gneiss; then descending, still through woods, we came to a copious brook of about the same dimension as the Abbuloh. This was the Bombatta, which flowed in a north-western direction and joined the Kooroo. The next brook, the Abeela, moved in the same direction, and was composed of a connected series of deep basins. Two more rivulets of the same character followed, the second of which, named the Ngoddoo, flowed past a flat bare elevation of gneiss and joined the Kooroo only a short distance to the west. Amongst the autumn flora of this region the Hydralia was very conspicuous, its brilliant sky-blue blossoms blending with the grass so as to form a charming carpet over the depressions of the brooks.

THE BAHR-EL-KOOROO.

An hour after crossing the Ngoddoo we arrived at the bank of the Bahr-el-Kooroo, as this important affluent of the Bahr-el-Arab is called by the Mohammedan settlers; the name is probably borrowed from the Baggara Arabs, as amongst the Golo (whose territory it divides from that of the Kredy on the west) it is sometimes called the Mony, and sometimes the Worry; by the Sehre it is called the Wee. At the place of our transit it was flowing towards the N.N.W., and the current was rather rapid. The entire breadth of the bed was between ninety and a hundred feet, but of this only sixty feet was covered with water, the depth of which nowhere exceeded two feet. At one spot the river flowed over blocks and layers of gneiss that were overgrown with mossy Tristichæ. The banks stood fifteen feet high, and although there were woods on either side that grew right down to the water, many indications remained of their being subject to a periodical inundation: a canoe left high up on the dry ground was an evidence how full of water the river must be during the rainy season.

We kept continually meeting small companies of slave traders, mounted on oxen or on donkeys and having their living merchandise in their train.

The long tracts of one species of forest-tree reminded me very much of the masses of the alder-like Vatica on the Tondy. Beyond the west bank of the river the path led up the steep side of a valley, and the level of the soil rapidly increased. Then we came to a series of ruts like deep ditches, some quite dry and some still filled with running water. We counted six of these before reaching the Beesh, or Khor-el-Rennem, which is an affluent of the Beery and the largest of the three tributaries of the Babr-el-Arab, which I had the opportunity of seeing.

The Khor-el-Rennem, or goats’ brook, received its name from the circumstance that once, during the period of the annual rains, a whole herd of goats had made an attempt tocross the stream and had all been drowned in the rushing flood. It was shut in by trees and bushes of many kinds, and these cast a gloomy shade over the chasm which was worn by the waters; it was now only a foot deep and fifteen feet wide.

Here, again, the land on the western shore rose suddenly like a wall, a peculiarity in the topography of the country that testified to the continual increase of its level above the sea.

Two easy leagues forward, generally over cultivated country and past several hamlets belonging to the Kredy tribe, the Nduggo, and I reached what I designed should be my resting-place for awhile at Seebehr’s Seriba, which was also the Egyptian camp. The distance of seventy miles from the Pongo had been accomplished in four days. By this time I had become quite accustomed to the habit of counting my steps. I had become my own “perambulator,” and could not help thinking, as I marched along, of Xenophon and hisparasangsin the expedition of the Greeks. One day of our ordinary marching would accomplish about four or five parasangs.

SEEBEHR’S SERIBA.

Seebehr’s Seriba was 2282 feet above the level of the sea, 464 feet higher than Bizelly’s Seriba on the Ghetty, and 737 feet higher than Ghattas’s chief settlement. There was but little observable change in the character of the vegetation; few new plants appeared, and almost the only difference was that the forests had apparently become more dense. But however little the gradual elevation of the land might affect the vegetation, yet the hydrographical condition of the country very plainly attested a complete alteration in the nature of the soil. Although our present latitude was 8° N., the general aspect that came under the observation of a traveller was almost identical with what he would see between latitude 6° and latitude 5° in passing southwards from Bongoland to the Niam-niam.

Immediately after crossing the Pongo we quitted the soft absorbent soil, and entered upon a region so prolific in springs that, all the year round, every rivulet, brook, and trench, and even the smallest fissure in the earth, is full of water, and that of the brightest and purest quality. Between the Pongo and Seebehr’s Seriba we had crossed no less than twenty brooks and two rivers of considerable magnitude. Just as had been the case in the Niam-niam lands, water trickled from every crevice and found an outlet on every slope, whilst in the low-lying country of the Dyoor and Bongo, on the edge of the red swamp-ore, where chasms and watercourses are quite as abundant, no springs ever break forth during the winter months, and the half-dry beds are supplied by no other water than what has been left from the previous Khareef.

This circumstance seems in a certain degree to illustrate the conformation of the south-western side of the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin; for the general direction of all the streams that contribute to its volume would be at right angles to the lines of the terraces that rise one above the other at various levels above the sea.

The Seriba was enclosed by a palisade 200 feet square; hundreds of farmsteads and groups of huts were scattered round, extending far away along the eastern slope of a deep depression which was traversed in the direction of the north-west by a brook that was fed by numerous springs. The whole place, in all its leading features, had the aspect of a town in the Soudan, and vividly reminded me of Matamma, the great market town in Gallabat, where all the inland trade with Abyssinia is transacted. To establishments of this magnitude the natives give the name of “Dehm,”[70]which is, in fact, an equivalent for “a town.” The heights to the eastof the place were more important than those immediately bordering on the depression, and in the N.N.E. very high ground was visible in the distance. Towards the west the country sloped downwards for a couple of leagues to the river Beery, which, it has been mentioned, is an important tributary of the Bahr-el-Arab.

The Egyptian troops were encamped at the southern extremity of the settlement, and were under the command of the Vokeel-el-urda, Ahmed Aga, who had been the lieutenant of the late Sandjak. The black swindler, Hellali, was still kept in confinement, his company of soldiers being treated as prisoners of war and placed under the surveillance of the other troops in a section of the camp allotted to the purpose. Great scarcity of provisions prevailed, for, in addition to the troops, the population had been augmented by the arrival of many hundreds of slave-dealers from Kordofan. Immediately on receiving information of the schemes that were being plotted against his copper-mines by the Egyptian Government, Husseïn, the Sultan of Darfoor, had prohibited all intercourse between his own frontiers and the Seribas of the Khartoomers; consequently the traders from Aboo Harras, in Kordofan, found themselves obliged to take a longer and more dangerous route across the steppes of the predatory Baggara; but, in spite of every difficulty, the presence of the Government troops offered such an attraction that the number of the traders was just doubled. They were enticed by the hope of carrying on a lucrative business with the avaricious Turkish soldiers, whose influential position gave them opportunities that were specially advantageous for making high profits; but besides this, the attempt, however abortive, of the Government authorities in Khartoom to suppress the slave-trade along the Nile had had the effect of driving up the traffic in the upper countries to such a premium that the dealers were spurred on to fresh energy. Since the last rainy season upwards of 2000 small slavedealershad arrived at the Seriba, and others were still expected.[71]All these people, like the troops, lived upon Seebehr’s corn-stores, and thus provisions became so scarce that they could hardly be purchased for their own weight in copper, which, with the exception of slaves, was the solitary medium of exchange.

EGYPTIAN TROOPS.

It might not unnaturally have been expected that the Egyptian troops would have taken up their position in the richest and most prolific of the corn-lands; but instead of this they had quartered themselves on the extreme limit of the Seribas in the Bahr-el-Ghazal district. The avowed reason for this was that they might be better able to overlook the approaches to the copper-mines of Darfoor, but the real motive was in order that they might be nearer the fountain-head of the slave-trade and in direct communication with the northern territories, from which the main supply of living merchandise was obtained. I have already drawn attention to the impossibility of raising the contributions of corn required by the Egyptian commander, and I now became a personal witness of the unreasonableness of his demands; he appeared to have no other object than to exhaust the land already impoverished by the slave-trade, and in true Turkish fashion he set to work to involve all that remained in utter ruin.

In point of fact, however, it must be owned that it was a matter of considerable difficulty (after the bloody conflict that had resulted from Hellali’s compulsory levies) for Ahmed Aga to raise the necessary supplies for the coming Khareef; but he made his requisitions in the most unfair way; his partiality was extreme, for while he exempted some Seribas from any contribution at all, he imposed upon others a demand for a double supply. My friend Mohammed was one of the oppressed. He had been called upon tofurnish fifty ardebs of corn, a quantity corresponding to the burdens of 150 to 170 bearers, and not only was his Seriba at Sabby at a distance of seventeen days’ journey from this spot, but his corn-magazines were still another four days’ journey farther on, so that the mere maintenance of the bearers for three weeks would take thirty ardebs more. Mohammed, in truth, had not sufficient corn of his own to meet the demand of the Divan, and would be reduced to the necessity, in order to make up what was deficient, of purchasing at famine prices from other Seribas which already were well-nigh exhausted.

I took upon myself to intercede with the Aga, but to no purpose; he was utterly inflexible, and, not content with insisting upon his original demand, inflicted a heavy fine for the delay in the payment of the tribute, by exacting a contribution of 100 ardebs instead of fifty. But what irritated me more than anything else was the barefaced iniquity with which he backed up Shereefee in his refusal to make any compensation to Mohammed for the outrage, no better than a highway robbery, which he had perpetrated upon him, whilst at the same time he pretended to upbraid Mohammed for what he called his implacability. The solution of the matter was very easy. Shereefee had bribed Ahmed Aga with a lavish present of slaves, and that was a gift as acceptable as cash, just because they were a recognised medium of currency.

Notwithstanding the crowd of human beings thus aggregated together, the bill of health, as far as it was influenced by the climate, was perfectly satisfactory. There were, of course, occasional cases of hereditary or insidious disease; but even amongst the slaves, closely packed as they were, the mortality was inconsiderable, and the human bones that lay scattered about were comparatively fewer than what I had grown accustomed to notice in other places. The effeminate Turkish soldiers, however, grumbled excessively at their position; they besieged me with petitions that I would notonly represent their misery to the Governor-General in the strongest terms, but that I would do my utmost to convince the authorities that neither profit nor glory could be gained from an enterprise which was exposing their lives to so much peril. “Do this,” they said, “and you will be doing us one of the greatest favours that it is in the power of mortal man to confer, and the blessing of Allah be with you!”

TURKS IN CENTRAL AFRICA.

Certain it is that these Turks, fit for nothing better than to lounge about on a divan, were the most unsuitable beings imaginable ever to have been sent on an expedition into the wilds of Central Africa. A year of their ordeal had scarcely passed, and already their complaints were piteous enough to melt a heart of stone; they seemed helpless as babes, and I verily believe that had it not been for the Nubians they would have been cheated and trampled on and reduced to the direst necessities in this land of solitude and starvation. They were all indifferent walkers; they could not endure the food of the country; they sorely missed their “schnaps;” they were aggrieved at the loss of their wheat-flour and their rice, and did not understand going without their habitual luxuries. It was indeed a kind of set-off against all this that they could be as indolent as they pleased. There was nothing to do, and nothing they did; they did not plant out a single plot of maize, they did not lay out a kitchen-garden of the simplest kind; but, loitering about from morning till night, they kept up their unfailing growls of discontent, dealing out their invectives against the “wretched” land and its “wretched” people. No wonder they complained ofennui. Divest a Turk of his fine clothes, his formal etiquette, his measured speech, and his little bit of honour which may be described as “l’extérieur de la vertu et l’élégance des vices,” and little remains to elevate him above a Nubian of the worst class; nevertheless, the mutual antipathy that existed between the Turks and the Nubians was very marked,and verified the proverb that “Arabs’ blood and Turks’ blood will never boil together.”

The remarkably large contingent of Gellahbas that chanced to be within the place gave the dirty crowds of men, such as are more or less to be invariably found in every Seriba, a more motley aspect than usual, and altogether the Dehm offered a deplorable contrast to the freshness of the wilderness that we had so long and so recently been traversing. The hawkers of living human flesh and blood, unwashed and ragged, squatted in the open places keeping their eye upon their plunder, eager as vultures in the desert around the carcase of a camel. Their harsh voices as they shouted out their blasphemous prayers; the drunken indolence and torpor of the loafing Turks; the idle, vicious crowds of men infested with loathsome scabs and syphilitic sores; the reeking filthy exhalations that rose from every quarter—​all combined to make the place supremely disgusting. Turn where I would, it was ever the same; there was the recurrence of sights, sounds, and smells so revolting that they could not do otherwise than fill the senses with the most sickening abhorrence.

Such were my impressions as I made my entry into the Dehm Nduggo, as the settlement is called from the Kredy tribe with which the neighbourhood is populated. The first consideration I had to make for myself was whether I would become the guest of the Turks or of the Nubians; I had to choose whether I would sue for hospitality at the hands of Seebehr or of the Turkish Aga. After due deliberation I made up my mind to apply to Seebehr, for as the Turks had taken the smaller share in the affair with Hellali, I concluded that they constituted the less powerful element, and, in truth, they were themselves dependent upon Seebehr’s liberality. But what perhaps influenced me still more was that my firman from the Government had been lost in the fire, and that consequently I was lacking in credentials tomake any formal and authoritative demands; and I did not wish to be at the mercy of the commander. As it was, Ahmed Aga did not even fulfil the stipulations that had been made in my favour by the Government in Khartoom, and all that I could get out of him was a supply of good writing-paper to enable me to go on with my sketching.

Amongst the effects of Kurshook Ali, on which I had set my hopes, I could discover nothing that would be of the least service to me; his successor had long since, in true Ottoman fashion, disposed of everything that could be turned to account, a proceeding that subsequently involved him in a lawsuit with the son of the deceased Sandjak.

SEEBEHR’S COURT.

Meanwhile I was most kindly received by Seebehr, and as long as I remained in the Seriba I had not the faintest cause of complaint. He was himself in a debilitated state of health; the wound that he had received in the late fray had proved very dangerous, the bullet having completely penetrated the ankle-bone. The only means employed for healing the wound was repeated syringing with pure olive-oil, a remedy which, though slow, had been efficacious; for when I saw him, after some weeks had elapsed since the casualty, the injury was all but cured.

Seebehr[72]had surrounded himself with a court that was little less than princely in its details. A group of large well-built square huts, enclosed by tall hedges, composed the private residence; within these were various state apartments, before which armed sentries kept guard by day and night. Special rooms, provided with carpeted divans, were reserved as ante-chambers, and into these all visitors were conducted by richly-dressed slaves, who served them with coffee, sherbet, and tchibouks. The regal aspect of these halls of state was increased by the introduction of some lions, secured, as may be supposed, by sufficiently strong andmassive chains. Behind a large curtain in the innermost hut was placed the invalid couch of Seebehr. Attendants were close at hand to attend to his wants, and a company of Fakis sat on the divan outside the curtain and murmured their never-ending prayers. In spite of his weakness and his suffering he was ever receiving a stream of visitors, who had something to say to “the Sheikh,” as he was commonly called. I often paid him a visit, and, to my surprise at first, was accommodated with a chair by the side of his bed. He repeatedly bewailed the helplessness of his condition, saying how vexed he was at being unable personally to provide for my requirements, adding that if he had been well, he should have had the greatest pleasure in escorting me over his lands. It was a great relief to my mind that he did not apply to me for surgical advice. I was glad to encourage him by my approbation of the remedy he was using, which, if it possessed no particular virtue, had at least the recommendation of being perfectly harmless.

A draft that I made on my account at Khartoom was duly honoured, and I obtained a hundredweight of copper from Seebehr’s stores; this I employed without delay as cash, and purchased soap, coffee, and a variety of small articles from the hawking hangers-on of the slave-traders, as well as a large supply of cartridge-paper for the preservation of my botanical specimens.

The greatest service, however, that Seebehr afforded me was in providing me with boots and shoes of European make; no acquisition was to be appreciated higher than this; and in finding myself fresh and well-shod I felt myself renovated to start again upon my wanderings with redoubled vigour. None but those who have been in my condition can comprehend the pleasure with which I hailed the sight of the most trivial and ordinary articles. Once again I was in possession of a comb, some pipe-bowls, and lucifers. As I was not in the least inclined to forego my smoking while on the march, Ihad been obliged, in order to get a light for my tobacco, to make one of my people carry a blazing firebrand throughout the recent journey.

IBRAHIM EFFENDI.

No sooner was I installed in the huts allotted to me than I received a succession of visitors; some of them crossed my threshold from mere idle curiosity, whilst others came either with some vague hope of profit or from some innate love of intrigue. I was honoured by a call from the great Zelim, Ali Aboo Amoory’s chief controller, who came to express his hope that I had been satisfied with my reception in his Seriba, which I had visited during his absence. Then I made the acquaintance of some of the more important slave-traders, who had long been settled in the place and who came burning with curiosity to know the real object of my journey. But the most remarkable of all my visitors was a certain Ibrahim Effendi, who held the office of head clerk and accountant in the Egyptian camp. His life had been one unbroken series of criminal proceedings, and he had been guilty of frauds and swindling transactions to an extent that was absolutely incredible. Originally a subordinate in one of the departments of the Egyptian Ministry he had, during Said Pasha’s Government, forged the Viceregal seal and attached it to a document professing to appoint him to the command of a regiment that was to be formed in Upper Egypt, and to prescribe that the local government there should defray all the expenses of levying and equipping the troops. This document he had the audacity to present first with his own hands to the governor of the province, and then forthwith he proceeded to present himself in the Upper Egyptian town as the colonel of the new regiment. Only those who are acquainted with the disorder and despotism that prevailed in every branch of the Administration during the lifetime of that Viceroy could believe that such a deception would be practicable; but I am in a position positively to assert that the fraudulent artifice did really fora while succeed. Two months afterwards, the troops having meanwhile been embodied, the Viceroy happened to make an excursion up the Nile, and seeing a great many soldiers on its banks, inquired the number of their regiment and why they were there. His astonishment was unbounded when he was told of a regiment of whose existence he had never previously heard. Ibrahim was summoned at once. Throwing himself at the Viceroy’s feet, the culprit colonel confessed his guilt and begged for mercy. The good-natured Said, who never suffered himself to lose his temper, far less to go into a rage, merely sentenced him to a few years’ banishment and imprisonment in Khartoom. As soon as Effendi had completed his term of punishment and regained his liberty, he started afresh as clerk to some of the Soudan authorities; but his habits of fraud and embezzlement were as strong as ever, and he was caught in the act of decamping with the cash-box, and was this time banished to Fashoda, on the White Nile, as being the safest place for dangerous characters of his stamp. After he had been here for several years our friend managed to excite the compassion of Kurshook Ali, who was passing through the place, and was induced to give him his present post of head clerk to his division of the Government troops. This appointment brought Effendi to the district of the Gazelle.

Well versed as he was in the ways of the world, Effendi, by his wit and versatility, seemed to have the power of winning every heart. His position here in the Egyptian camp offered only too wide a scope for his love of intrigue. He had played an important part in the affair with Hellali, having doubtless been at the bottom of the stroke of policy that had reconciled Seebehr to the Turkish soldiers by bringing the hated Hellali to chains and to the yoke of the sheba. Probably he was again bidding for the command of come troops, and I am bound to confess that he seemed in afair way of being able before long to gratify his old predilection for military organisation.

DAR FERTEET.

The uninhabited wilderness stretching to the west of the Pongo, a district long known to the inhabitants of Darfoor and Kordofan under the name of Dar Ferteet,[73]represents one of the oldest domains of the slave-trade, and at the present day, as far as regards its aboriginal population, presents to the eye of a traveller the aspect of what may be described as “a sold-out land.” Only within the last fifteen years have the Khartoom trading-companies penetrated into the district watered by the Gazelle, but long before that numbers of slave-dealers had already formed settlements in Dar Ferteet, then as now streaming into the country from Darfoor and Kordofan accompanied by hundreds of armed men, and coming, year after year, in the winter months so as to accomplish their business and get back to their homes before the rainy season again set in. Some of them, however, did not return, but remained permanently in the land, and, under the sanction of the more influential chieftains, founded large establishments (Dehms) to serve as marts ordepôtsfor their black merchandise. As soon as the ivory-traders, with their enormous armed bands, made their appearance in the country, the Gellahbas received them with open arms; and the Nubians, in order to provide for the storing of their ivory and ammunition, forthwith combined their Seribas with the Dehms already established, so that in the course of time these places assumed the appearance of the market towns of the Soudan. The Gellahbas by remaining in their old quarters reaped a twofold advantage: in the first place, the large contingents of armed men thatwere now introduced into the country relieved them from the necessity of maintaining troops of their own; and, secondly, they were exonerated from the heavy imposts that they had been compelled to pay to the native Kredy chieftains, as these were very speedily reduced by the Nubians to the subordinate position of mere sheikhs or local overseers of the natives. In the course of my tour through Dar Ferteet I became acquainted with five of these towns, which represented so many centres of the slave-trade in this part of the country.

But although the various Khartoom companies who had thus taken up their quarters in the Dehms sent out expeditions every year to the remotest of the Kredy tribes in the west, and even penetrated beyond them to the Niam-niam in the south-west, it did not take them very long to discover that the annual produce of ivory was altogether inadequate to defray the expenses of equipping and maintaining their armed force. Finding, however, that the region offered every facility for the sale of slaves, they began gradually to introduce this unrighteous traffic into their commercial dealings, until at length it became, if not absolutely the prime, certainly one of the leading objects of their expeditions; thus the people whom the professional Gellahbas had at first hailed as friends grew up, ere long, to be their most formidable rivals. For example, Seebehr Rahama himself, who had to maintain a fighting force of a thousand men on his territories, had, as the result of his ivory expedition in the previous year, gained no more than 300 loads or 120 cwt., a quantity which realised but little over 2300l.at Khartoom; but at the same time he sent probably as many as 1800 slaves direct to Kordofan, there to be disposed of on his own account.

Ethnographically considered, Dar Ferteet presented a wondrous medley. Perhaps nowhere else, in an area so limited, could there be found such a conglomeration of therepresentatives of different races as upon the cultivated tracts in the environs of the Dehms: they were evidently the miserable remnants of an unceasing work of destruction. As we have already observed, the neighbours of the Bongo upon the west were the Golo and the Sehre, who combine together and have their homes in common. Beyond them, still farther to the west, are the Kredy. These Kredy do not seem to be limited to any particular district, but like blades of any one particular species of grass, crop up every now and then, quite at haphazard, as it were, amongst the other species in detached groups. The tribes which predominate, or at any rate those which I had the most frequent opportunities of observing, were the Nduggo, who were settled around Seebehr’s Dehm; the Bia, who were settled all about Dehm Gudyoo; and the Yongbongo, who occupied the region between the two.

THE KREDY.

Of all the people of the Bahr-el-Ghazal district with whom I made acquaintance, the Kredy, I think, were the ugliest; and whether it was in consequence of their longer period of subjection, or that they were depressed by their straitened circumstances, I cannot say, but certainly they were, to my mind, very inferior in intelligence to the Golo, the Sehre, and the Bongo. In form the Kredy are thick and unwieldy, and entirely wanting in that symmetry of limb which we admire in the slim figures of those who inhabit the swampy depressions of the Gazelle; but although their limbs are strong and compact, they must not be supposed to be like the muscular and well-developed limbs of Europeans. They are like the true Niam-niam in being below an average height, and resemble them more particularly in the broad brachycephalic form of their skulls; there is, however, a very marked difference between the two races in the growth of the hair and in the shape of the eyes. Their lips are thicker and more protruding and their mouths wider than those of any other negroes that I saw throughout the whole of mytravels. Their upper incisor teeth were either filed to a point or cut away, so as to leave intervening gaps between tooth and tooth; in the lower jaw there is no mutilation, and the teeth being left intact may perhaps account for their language being more articulate than any other in this part of Africa, although, at the same time, it bears but the slightest resemblance to any of them. Their complexion is coppery-red, the same hue that is to be noticed among the fairer individuals of the Bongo; but, like the majority of the Niam-niam, they are generally coated with such encrusted layers of dirt that they appear several shades darker than they really are: as a rule I should say that they are decidedly fairer than either the Bongo or the Niam-niam.

The Kredy are bounded on the north by the Baggara-el-Homr; on the north-west, three and a half days’ journey from Dehm Nduggo, reside the tribe of the Manga, who are said to be quite distinct from the Kredy; on the west, five or six days’ journey from Dehm Gudyoo, on the Upper Bahr-el-Arab, are the abodes of the Benda, whose land has long been known to the Foorians under the name of Dar Benda, and used to be the limit of their venturesome slave-raids; still farther to the west are the settlements of the Aboo Dinga, who are said to have no affinity either with Kredy or Niam-niam. The most important of the western Kredy tribes are the Adya, Bia, and Mareh, and towards the south-west their territory is approximate to the frontier wildernesses of Mofio, the Niam-niam king. Finally, in the south, there is a mingled population of Golo and Sehre, the Sehre decidedly very much predominating in numbers.

A PROJECT ABANDONED.

Before I had learnt the true state of things with respect to the caravan-roads that started from Dehm Nduggo, I had indulged the hope of making my homeward journey by the overland route through Kordofan: the prospect of extending my geographical knowledge by traversing unknown lands was very attractive and almost irresistible, but when the difficultiesand drawbacks came to be reckoned up, I was compelled, however reluctantly, to relinquish a project so perilous as marching across the steppes of the Baggara, and to reconcile myself to retrace my course by the more secure and habitual highway of the Nile. I could willingly have borne the exposure to fatigue, and it might be to hunger; I could have risked the peril of being attacked, and could have stood my chance of procuring the necessary provisions and means of transport; but the extreme uncertainty as to the length of time which the slave-dealers’ caravans would take upon their northward return was of itself sufficient to deter me from my scheme; I ascertained that, whenever it suited their interest, they would linger for weeks and weeks together at various places on their way, and delays such as this were altogether inconsistent with my present purpose and convenience.

In the meantime I found a very desirable opportunity of forwarding my long-written letters to Khartoom: the Turkish commander was about to remit his own despatches by a caravan, and he undertook to enclose my correspondence with his own. As a security against any injury that might happen to the mail-bag from the caravan being attacked by the marauding soldiers of the Sultan Husseïn, Ahmed Aga had provided an ordinary Arab travelling chest with a double bottom as a hiding-place for all the papers. The chest was confided to a trustworthy Faki, who happily reached the Egyptian frontier without molestation.

Taking seven leagues as an average day’s march, the journey from Dehm Nduggo to Aboo Harras on the southern frontier of Kordofan is estimated to take thirty days. This statement was confirmed by various independent testimonies, and I found moreover that it corresponded with the distance of the two places as indicated by my map, a distance which, according to the position that I assigned to Dehm Nduggo, would be a trifle under 380 miles. The route first of allleads in a N.N.E. direction to Seebehr’s most northerly Seriba, Serraggo, a distance which it takes three days to accomplish. Another day’s march and the traveller reaches Dalgowna, a depôt much frequented by the slave-dealers and situated on the isolated mountain of the same name as itself, from which there is said to be an extensive view across the northern steppes. The Beery flows quite close to this Gebel Dalgowna, on its way to join the Bahr-el-Arab farther to the north-east. Three days’ journey more and the Bahr-el-Arab is attained, just at a spot were it marks off the frontiers of the Baggara-el-Homr. On account of the so-called Bedouins (known as “Arabs” in the common parlance of the Soudan) residing upon its banks, the river has received, from the traders of Kordofan and Darfoor, the designations both of the Bahr-el-Arab and the Bahr-el-Homr: that these two appellations belong to different rivers is quite a fallacy, and the mistake, which has found its way into many maps, very probably originated in travellers sometimes calling the river by one name and sometimes by the other. There is really but theoneriver. After another three days’ march Shekka is reached, the great rendezvous in the territory of the Baggara-Rizegat. It may thus be seen that the journey from Dehm Nduggo to Shekka may be accomplished in ten or twelve days, according to the length of the day’s marching.

According to the statements that I gathered and have now recorded, Shekka, I should suppose, corresponds with a position described by Escayrac de Lauture in his valuable accounts of these regions, and which he distinguishes by the name of Sook-Deleyba (i.e., the market near the Deleb palms). Shekka, in fact, appears to be an important market-place and rendezvous for the itinerant slave-dealers, as well as for the Baggara Bedouins, many of whom have permanent homes there; it is the site also of the residence of Munzel, the Sheikh of the Rizegat. But it is most notorious of all asbeing the principal resort of all the great Kordofan slave-traders: being beyond the jurisdiction of Egypt and its arbitrary officials, who are in the habit of extorting a specific sum per head for hush-money on every slave that is conveyed into the country, it is a spot that enables them to transact their nefarious business free from the burdensome imposts, and to transmit their living merchandise in whatever direction may suit them, all over the provinces of the Soudan.

ROUTE TO DARFOOR.

The journey from Shekka to Aboo Harras, I was given to understand, would require eighteen days, and even with very long days’ marching could not be accomplished in less than fifteen days. All my informants agreed most positively in asserting that there were no streams of any magnitude to be crossed, and that even in the height of the rainy season there were no brooks nor swamps to offer any serious obstacle to travellers. There was, however, no time of the year, not even in the middle of winter, when the Bahr-el-Arab could be crossed by any other means than swimming, or by rafts constructed of grass.

The caravan-roads from Dehm Nduggo to Darfoor were closed at the time of my visit. They nearly all started in a N.N.W. direction. Almost immediately after leaving the Seriba, the traveller would have to cross the Beery, and proceed for three or four leagues until he arrived at the subsidiary Seriba Deleyb; another day’s march to the north-west would bring him to one of the minor Seribas, of which the controller’s name was Soliman; and two days more would find him at a Seriba on the Gebel Mangyat, as the natives call that district. The notorious copper-mines Hofrat-el-Nahahs[74]are said to be situated six days’ journeyto the south of this region of the Manga, and to lie on the southern frontier of Darfoor. The copper is brought into the market either in the shape of clumsily-formed rings, full of angles, varying in weight from five pounds to fifty, or in long oval cakes of very imperfect casting. The price that I had to pay for the hundred rottoli (about 80 lbs.) that I obtained from Seebehr was 1500 piastres, or 75 Maria Theresa dollars, which would be represented by about £15 of English money.

Seebehr had a Seriba on the frontiers of Darfoor that was in constant intercourse with this important place, and through his interest I obtained a sample of the ore of these far-famed mines. It weighed about five pounds. One half of it I handed to the Khedive of Egypt at an audience with which he honoured me; the other half I deposited in the Mineralogical Museum at Berlin. The specimen consisted of copper-pyrite and quartz, with an earthy touch of malachite, commonly called green carbonite of copper, but containing a very small quantity of the real metal.

No systematic mining seems to be carried on in the “Hofrat-el-Nahahs,” and the man who brought me the sample carefully concealed in his clothes, informed me that the ore was found lying like loose rubble in the dry bed of a khor. It may be presumed that by boring galleries, or even by hewing out quarries, a large supply of the metal might be obtained without any vast expenditure of time or money, for even in the present condition of things, while the solid rock still remains intact, the yield of copper for years past has been very considerable. The Foorian copper even now takes a prominent part in the commerce of the entire Soudan; it is conveyed across Wadai to Kano in Haussa, and, according to Barth, it holds its own in the market even against that imported from Tripoli.

FOOTNOTES:[64]“Kurnuk” is the term used by the Nubians and Foorians for a shed; the corresponding expression in the Soudan Arabic being “Daher-el-Tor,” literally, the back of an ox; thus “kurnuk” means generally any roof with a horizontal ridge.[65]Dr. Steudner died on the 10th of April, 1863, from an attack of fever; a few daysbefore that, in company with Heuglin, he had commenced his first journey into the interior; his object had been to reconnoitre the country to the west of the Meshera, and to find a suitable place for the accommodation of Miss Tinné’s party during the rainy season.[66]The real name of the firm is Ali-Aboo-Amoory, and it has acquired an undesirable notoriety for its fraudulent dealings with Miss Tinné’s expedition.[67]“Kulloo” is in this neighbourhood the generic name for brooks of this character.[68]This was the most westerly point that Heuglin reached in Central Africa.[69]In the dialect of the Soudan these distinctions are respectively rendered by the terms “Dar” (cultivated land) and “Akabah” (wilderness).[70]The Khartoomers have given the word Dehm an Arabic plural, “Dwehm;” and by this term they distinguish the great slave marts of the west.[71]The entire number that year rose to 2700.[72]Seebehr’s name at full length was Seebehr-Rahama-Gyimme-Abel.[73]Ferteet is the term by which the Foorians and Baggara distinguish the Kredy tribes as a nation from the Niam-niam. In a wider sense the term is applied to all the heathen nations to the south of Darfoor. In the Soudan the guinea-worm is also called Ferteet, probably because the heathen negroes act especially liable to its attacks.[74]There is much uncertainty about the exact geographical position of these famous mines. The accounts differ widely, so that I can only approximately determine the precise situation. According to Brown, Hofrat is twenty-three and a half days’ journey from Kobbeh, the capital of Darfoor, whilst according to Barth it is only eight good days’ march from Tendelti, which is a day’s journey from Kobbeh. I should imagine that it probably lies a little to the west of the position that I have assigned it in my map: of one thing I am certain—​it lies to the west of the roads to Darfoor.

[64]“Kurnuk” is the term used by the Nubians and Foorians for a shed; the corresponding expression in the Soudan Arabic being “Daher-el-Tor,” literally, the back of an ox; thus “kurnuk” means generally any roof with a horizontal ridge.

[65]Dr. Steudner died on the 10th of April, 1863, from an attack of fever; a few daysbefore that, in company with Heuglin, he had commenced his first journey into the interior; his object had been to reconnoitre the country to the west of the Meshera, and to find a suitable place for the accommodation of Miss Tinné’s party during the rainy season.

[66]The real name of the firm is Ali-Aboo-Amoory, and it has acquired an undesirable notoriety for its fraudulent dealings with Miss Tinné’s expedition.

[67]“Kulloo” is in this neighbourhood the generic name for brooks of this character.

[68]This was the most westerly point that Heuglin reached in Central Africa.

[69]In the dialect of the Soudan these distinctions are respectively rendered by the terms “Dar” (cultivated land) and “Akabah” (wilderness).

[70]The Khartoomers have given the word Dehm an Arabic plural, “Dwehm;” and by this term they distinguish the great slave marts of the west.

[71]The entire number that year rose to 2700.

[72]Seebehr’s name at full length was Seebehr-Rahama-Gyimme-Abel.

[73]Ferteet is the term by which the Foorians and Baggara distinguish the Kredy tribes as a nation from the Niam-niam. In a wider sense the term is applied to all the heathen nations to the south of Darfoor. In the Soudan the guinea-worm is also called Ferteet, probably because the heathen negroes act especially liable to its attacks.

[74]There is much uncertainty about the exact geographical position of these famous mines. The accounts differ widely, so that I can only approximately determine the precise situation. According to Brown, Hofrat is twenty-three and a half days’ journey from Kobbeh, the capital of Darfoor, whilst according to Barth it is only eight good days’ march from Tendelti, which is a day’s journey from Kobbeh. I should imagine that it probably lies a little to the west of the position that I have assigned it in my map: of one thing I am certain—​it lies to the west of the roads to Darfoor.

Back to IndexNext