Chapter IV

Where proud men knelt in all the pomp of prayer.

* * * * *

OLD DONGOLA.

A deserted town. — The Coptic church. — The priest. — His admiration for England. — The books I gave him. — A search for a bed. — A long swim. — The opposite bank of the river. — White ants. — Started.

THE town of Old Dongola (Dongola Agooss), formerly the capital of the province, is situated at the summit of a high rock on the right bank of the Nile; its houses are almost all in ruins, and the streets or lanes between them are choked with sand which is continually drifting from the desert, and no attempt is made by the inhabitants to arrest the progress of what must, before many years, lead to their miserable town being entirely overwhelmed. Scarcely one house in ten is occupied, and it is possible to perambulate the town from end to end without meeting a single soul; even a dog is a rarity. Having been originally built, seemingly for military purposes, on a rock far above the level of high Nile, there is no vegetation in the town; every drop of water and every bit of food have to be carried up the steep and sandy slopes from the cultivated ground below; the inhabitants are year by year moving over to the opposite bank, and building themselves abodes in a more suitable soil. At the back of the town is an extensive graveyard with some large, well-built stone tombs, showing that at one remote period the place had importance and contained greater and richer population than its present area and wretchedness would lead one to suppose; and here is also a Coptic church, erected on the highest part of the rock, from the top of which a far-extending view of the desert and green-fringed river may be obtained. This church is quite destitute of architectural beauty, and is, I was told, of great antiquity. The walls are ornamented with paintings, some of which had apparently been lately restored; the designs are of the crudest description, scarcely excelling, in merit, the drawings which a very young child might make on a slate. The attendant priest, whom I saw and with whom I entered into conversation, was attired in the ordinary costume of the country; his clothes, however, were black, instead of white or blue, the colours worn by the Mohommedans; another distinction was that he did not wear a “tarboosh,” or head-covering, of any kind. His hair, of which he had a great profusion, was black, long and ragged, and, although he was a young man, it was slightly tinged with gray. He was engaged in wiping down, with an old rag, the saintly pictures on the walls, and appeared to take an interest in their preservation which, I thought, their artistic worth did not seem to warrant. His sallow face was melancholy, handsome and highly intelligent, certainly of the priestly type, but without the fixed and self-satisfied air of unreasoning conviction so generally discernible in that class of countenance. He was the only occupant of the building, and seldom ventured beyond its walls; water and dates, on which he exclusively lived, were daily supplied to him by some member of the Coptic faith in the neighbourhood. He had but one book, a bible in the Amharic language, issued, as I saw on reference to its title-page, by the “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts”; this was well-thumbed and in parts scarcely readable. Service, he told me, had not been held in the church for many years, and when a marriage, baptism, or burial was to take place, a superior had to be sent for from Khartoom, or sometimes from Gondar in Abyssinia, he not being yet qualified to undertake such duties. He volunteered to show me over the church, which, however, presented no objects of interest. The pictures, about which I specially inquired, were, I was given to understand, copies of others in Axum, the holy city of Abyssinia; when, or by whom painted he was unable to say, but his opinion was that they had not been renovated for the last hundred years. Seated on the roof of the building, we conversed on various subjects. He was certainly ignorant, as a man so secluded from the civilised world would necessarily be. His thirst after knowledge was proportionately intense. The questions he put were mostly about Europe and the state of Christianity among the different peoples, and their relative power in war. England was the object of an admiration amounting almost to worship. The bible he read all day long, and half through the night by the light of the stars, came, he knew, from England; it had been given to him by his father previous to his leaving his home in Gondar, with strict injunctions to think of England in his prayers whenever he read it. He remembered the Abyssinian war and the release of the missionaries, and although King Theodore had been his countryman and a good Christian, he heard of his downfall without regret as he had been the enemy of England. If Queen Victoria would only visit Abyssinia the whole nation would receive her on its knees, such was the admiration of the goodness and power of England and of her Queen. Beyond all things he was anxious to study the English language. Had I any old books to lend? he would faithfully return them on our way back. I promised that I would send him over an English-Arabic dictionary, and collect some books for him in our camp. Various was the collection I made: a church service, _Mr. Midshipman Easy_, and _Artemus Ward, His Book_. The latter work I considered hardly suitable for a priestly student of the English language, owing to its generally frivolous nature and incorrect spelling, but was overruled by the generous donor, who argued that it would afford a good sample of American literature and taste. There was, of course, a legend about the church; a story of love and religion, conflicting duties and long pain, relieving death and a miracle; just such a legend as may be heard any day on the Rhine in its castles and churches. I cannot remember it; let the reader be grateful. I wished my friend good-night, and walked through the sandy lanes of the town to the landing-place on the bank of the river, to find the only boat Old Dongola possessed on the opposite side. The Nile at this point being more than two thousand feet wide, I had no means of communicating to the crew my wish to be ferried across, and returned to the church to get a night’s lodging. The priest offered his “angereb,” or sleeping-couch, which he brought from some secret corner, into the body of the church, saying he would go and read by the moonlight outside; but not liking the look of the “angereb” nor, I must confess, the solitude of the place, I thanked him much and went into the town to seek other quarters. After calling loudly at the doorless entrances of twenty or more vacant huts, I at last found one inhabited by a lonely old woman. She offered me dates and water, and was making me up a bed when, from our conversation, she learned the predicament in which I was placed; she at once went out, and in a few minutes returned with a young boy and told me to go down to the river with him. The boy stript off his clothes on the bank, and proceeded to swim across. In about an hour the boat was alongside, and I was not sorry to get over the river to supper and to bed after willingly paying a dollar, as agreed, to the boy for his trouble.

The houses on the opposite side of the river to Old Dongola differ in no respect, except in being more numerous, from those which stretch in almost unbroken line from Haffeer to Ambukol, the furthest point I have visited on the bank of the Nile. In addition to the various kinds of grains and fruits, the inhabitants cultivate cotton in large quantities. This product requiring an abundant supply of water, a rude canal, the only one I have seen beyond Wady Halfa, has been constructed, communicating with the Nile above and below the village; at low Nile, when the canal is dry, water is conveyed across it in numerous small aqueducts, built on timber uprights, to the cotton-fields beyond. None of this cotton finds its way to Lower Egypt; the trade is exclusively carried on with the population living along the banks and with the wandering Arabs, nearly all of whom wear clothes made in Old Dongola. There are many looms in the town, of the most primitive description. The width of the cloth is fifteen inches, and is usually made in lengths of ten feet; a piece of this width and length forms, with a pair of drawers, the dress of an Arab. It is rolled round his loins and shoulders without fastenings of any kind, and generally lasts him for five or six years, and if he is careful often much longer. I purchased some lengths of this cotton cloth, and had them made by one of our soldiers into trousers. They certainly long out-lasted the duck and brown holland which I had brought from England.

Many of the children, when not engaged in minding the everlasting Zakeeyahs, are employed in fishing; they use the hook, but more frequently a trap. The fish they catch are similar to those obtainable in the markets of the native town at Cairo—the shall, the bultee, and the kharmoot; they are considered edible, but are certainly not worth eating. Enough fish to furnish a dinner for four persons for three days can be bought for fourpence. The flavour of one kind resembles the flavour of another. A very watery plaice with a strong taste of mud gives a very good idea of Nile fish. A market is held twice weekly, Tuesday and Friday. There is always a good attendance, and brisk trade in doura, beans, lentils, tobacco (green), coffee, clothes, French cigarette papers, German or Swedish matches, olives, water-melons, fowls, turkeys, sheep, oxen, &c.; beef, but not mutton, is also sold in pieces, without bones, for the benefit of the classes who cannot afford a whole ox. We were always suspicious about these anything-but-inviting- looking bits of beef, and formed a conclusion, perhaps without justification, that they had been cut from animals who had come to their end by means other than the butcher’s knife. When we wanted beef for dinner we invariably bought a living animal, and as the meat will not keep more than for two days, we were often in a position to offer a feast of good beef to a large number of the inhabitants. My share of the expenses in camp, including those of my servant, were, I find, on reference to accounts, three pounds five shillings for the month of January, just half of which was passed here, the remainder of the month being spent in New Dongola and in travelling. Prices, however, do not vary much, and our consumption was very regular. This outlay included the purchase of beef and mutton, turkeys, fowls, eggs, milk, coffee, lentils for soup, onions, charcoal, water-melons, and butter for cooking, the last an expensive item.

On the 25th we received letters and papers from England dated December 10th, forty-five days on the way out, sent by special messenger from New Dongola; the latter place is the last postal station on this route. The main line goes by Korosco and Aboo Hamed to Khartoom, Kordofan and Darfoor. The delivery, every ten days, is pretty punctual, and the postage from England is one piastre (twopence halfpenny). The letters after reaching Cairo are carried by rail to Sioot, and thence by runners, the shiekhs of the villages on the road being responsible for their immediate despatch at any hour of the day or night. Before leaving New Dongola we made arrangements for a special post to bring our letters once a month up to a certain date, after which they were to go round by Khartoom to meet us in Darfoor.

In Old Dongola white ants abound. Anything placed on the ground so as to exclude the light, brings them from their hidden depths in the earth to eat up all that lies in their way. A pair of boots or a travelling-bag may be rendered quite useless in a single day. The tarpaulin, covered with green baize, which we used for the floors of the tents, they were especially fond of, and holes, as big as the palm of the hand, were eaten out in a very short time. Perfect immunity from their attacks may, however, be secured by raising all edible property, such as chairs and tables, trunks and portmanteaus, a little above the ground, on stones, and placing them in the light as much as possible. The habits of the white ants vary much in different parts of the world. In Southern Africa they construct conical hills, from three to eight feet high, of the hardest possible red clay mixed with woody fibres, and a waxy secretion from their bodies. Schweinfurth, travelling in Central Africa amongst the Niam-Niam, describes the nest of one class as of mushroom shape, and of similar materials to the last mentioned, while another class suspended their nests in the form of a cask from the branches of trees, using the bark and leaves as building-material. This great traveller was obliged to have recourse to the ants as food, and from his account seemed, after long abstinence, to have enjoyed them much. Fortunately none of our party was ever reduced to such extremities, and I am therefore not in a position to say anything about their flavour. In Venezuela, in the forests of which I have passed some considerable time, their architecture is again different. The nests are egg-shaped and honey-combed on the exterior surface as well as inside. They are often a yard long by eighteen inches in diameter, and are attached to the bark of a tree, sometimes near the root and sometimes as high as fifty feet above the ground, close under the first branches. The incessant feeding of the ants on the timber in the proximity of the nest causes the upper part of the tree to topple over, leaving a branchless column for which the traveller has often been puzzled to account. In Nubia they burrow in the earth until they come to moisture, and in the cultivable banks of the river, where they abound most, may be said to rise and fall with the Nile. In the desert, below 18° latitude, within the limits of the tropical rains, they only come to the surface in the wet season to feed upon and destroy the interior of the hardest trees, leaving only the bark standing till the gale comes and blows it away.

We were delayed in Old Dongola for seventeen days, waiting for the camels; the portion of our expedition which had gone on to Khartoom, had engaged a large number, and there was consequently a scarcity. Strict injunctions had been sent by the authorities in Cairo that only camels of the best class should be furnished to us, and this circumstance, in a great measure, tended also to lengthen our stay, as many animals had to be rejected as weak and unfit before our required number was complete.

The character of the camel has formed the subject of various writers of more or less experience; by some he has been described as, under all circumstances, patient, good-tempered, and long-suffering; by others as always surly, ferocious, malicious, and obstinate. Each is an extreme view; he is a mixture of all these qualities, good and bad; his virtues are exhibited on his journey, his vices directly he comes into camp. He is essentially a traveller, rest for him is an abnormal condition. As long as he is moving, whether fairly loaded or not, he will go on unmurmuring without rest, food, or water, if necessary, till he dies, and the less the driver interferes with him the better. Directly the day’s journey is over, and he has to stop, he begins to growl, to snarl, and sometimes to bite; it is the kneeling down, the sudden fall on the front knees, that he objects to. The climax of his ill-nature is reached in the morning when he is again brought into camp to receive his load; the noise he makes is like that of many angry lions. Once on his legs again, and started on his journey, he is quiet and happy. He is utterly unsympathetic, and no amount of kindness will elicit the least spark of gratitude, or even of recognition. I much doubt whether he knows his driver from another similarly dressed. Our European attire seemed at first to disconcert him, but he soon learned to look upon it with indifference. It takes a great deal to alarm him: a rifle may be fired from his back, and, although this may never have been done before, he will give no evidence of even having heard it; a beast of prey may start from its lair, within a yard or two from his track, and he will not deign to notice it. At certain seasons, however, the females are restless and dangerous to ride; they will get scared without cause, and bolt, only coming to a stop when quite exhausted. The seat in the saddle, under these circumstances, is, as I know to my cost, very difficult to keep. The male is much the safer animal to choose. The Egyptian camel has one hump.[5] Some of the better class of animals are trained for riding purposes, and often attain to a speed of seven or eight miles an hour; these “hygeems” are, however, rare. The difference between a “hygeem,” or dromedary, and a baggage-camel, is that which is between the race-horse and the cart-horse.

There have been many different statements printed respecting the number of days during which a camel will endure without water. The whole question is entirely dependent upon how much work he does, and upon the heat of the climate in which he works. In the month of February 1872, I rode a camel for two hours a day, from the 3rd to the 19th, sixteen days, and during the whole of that time he never drank. The temperature seldom exceeded 70° Fahr., and the nights were cold, the thermometer falling to 40° Fahr. On arrival at his destination he was certainly thirsty, and his potations lasted for at least half an hour, during which time he must have consumed eighteen or twenty gallons. In the month of June on our present expedition in Darfoor, when the daily maximum reached 100° Fahr. or more, in the shade, the camels were often without water for ten days, and were kept pretty well worked without seeming to suffer. These were picked animals, and not a death occurred amongst them. Generally, however, camels will work better if allowed to drink every five or seven days. To choose a camel for a long journey is difficult; the best plan is simply to leave the matter in the hands of the guide, who, if you treat him properly, will do his best to be your friend, and will certainly find a better camel than any European, after all the instructions that have ever been printed.

On the morning of the 3rd of February all the camels were brought into camp, and after the loads had been fairly apportioned, amidst much squabbling on the part of the drivers, and growling on the part of the camels, we were ready to start by 11 o’clock, and left Old Dongola, and the white ants, without regret after our long and weary stay.

[Decoration]