Chapter VIII

The clear blue sky had lost its regent moon,

The pale red rose had lent the east its bloom,

Gilding the azure of the blended hues,

The glorious orb rose proud upon his reign.

Poised in the dome of still transparent air

A marble cloud hung streaked with the sun’s gold,

With rose-leaves showered o’er its snow-white sides;

And that day’s noon was sunless, and at night

There was a fearful storm.

* * * * *

FROM BAGGHAREEYEH TO OM-BADR.

A trapped gazelle. — A lost camel. — The warning of the storm. — The storm. — Arab prowlers. — The plain of Om-Badr. — A crowd. — An unfriendly shiekh. — A conversation.

AT Bagghareeyeh there are about a hundred and fifty wells, all in the centre of the valley, varying from ten to thirty feet in depth. The shallow wells, however, only contain water during the fall of the rains. A short distance below a ridge of quartz crosses the valley, which tending to retain the water, has evidently led to the selection of this site for the wells.

While, on the day following our arrival, we were devoting ourselves to the contemplation of the heavens in order to fix our position on the earth, we were disturbed in our labours by a sight which, though common among the Arabs, was certainly new, not to say disagreeable, to me. A gazelle, caught during the night in an ordinary foot-trap laid by our Arabs, passed near us, dragging, in its frantic endeavours to escape, a large thorny branch to which the trap had been tied. Four men were pursuing it, and overtook it close to where we were stationed. Their knives, which they carry in sheaths fastened to the left arm a little above the elbow, were quickly drawn. One cut was made across the throat, and, while the animal was still breathing, its stomach was half cut, half torn open, and the green and yellow partly-digested contents were ravenously devoured in handsful. One of the Arabs, his hands and mouth reeking with the blood of the gazelle, rushed to us, and, in his politest and most winning way, stretched forth a handful of the disgusting mass of chewed leaves and grass, and begged us to set to while it was still warm. We did not eat it, we told him we had already breakfasted. The Arab, however, knowing the flavour better, and consequently appreciating more, soon showed us that the good things of this world were not to be despised. The flesh of the gazelle was speedily disposed of; large lumps were torn off by hands and teeth, and swallowed whole. When the meal was finished, and the blood wiped from the hands and faces of those who had partaken of it, nothing remained but the sucked and marrowless bones scattered about on the ground. The skin was taken away to be cured, and the entrails to be dried and presented at some future period, as ornaments or for stringing beads, to the sweethearts and wives of the fortunate captors of the unhappy gazelle.

On the morning of the 26th we continued our journey, my companion and myself starting on a bee line for Om-Badr, and the other section following the centre of the valley. We got away early, leaving the caravan to follow, and rested for lunch about twelve o’clock some ten miles on the route along which the camels would have to travel. One o’clock came and no caravan was in sight; two o’clock, and still no caravan. I sent Mohommed Gadderâb back to ascertain what the matter was, and with instructions that under any circumstances the caravan was to get on as fast as possible. On its late arrival I learned that one of the laden camels was lost, and that all the drivers had searched for miles round in vain; and, moreover, that Mohommed the Mahound had been much concerned and had prayed, and that his efforts had been equally in vain. I first inquired whether the camel was laden with my property. With many protestations the unhappy “Mahound” assured me that it was not; the camel was laden with two large sacks of soldiers’ bread. I eased his mind by telling him that very likely there was plenty of bread to be had at El Fasher, where a body of troops was stationed, and that, should none be obtainable there, we had plenty of rice and flour in our stores, and could, if necessary, make up the loss. I suggested to him that it was highly probable that the camel had by mistake walked off with the other caravan, and that one of the guides could ride over to- morrow, or, if he preferred it, at once, and find out if such were the case. This idea of the camel’s having got mixed up with those of the other section had never occurred to our friend the “Mahound.” Its probability struck him immediately, and a smile lighted up his hitherto forlorn-looking face. He told me I knew everything; he would at once despatch a guide to bring back the missing camel and bread. I pointed out to him, eight or ten miles away, what I fortunately knew was the site fixed upon by the other section for the first day’s resting-place. The camel and bread were safely brought back late at night, and a _fantasìa_ was immediately inaugurated. I had earned the reputation of being a wise man, but at the dear cost of being kept awake half the night by the music and shouting of that long-lasting _fantasìa_.

Our route after leaving Bagghareeyeh was along the western side of the Wady Milkh. The boundary of the valley was very indefinite, and the rocks were scattered about in all directions. To our right lay a dismal mountain region very high above the level of the valley, but without a marked line of beginning and, from aught we could see from some of the highest peaks we ascended, without approachable end. On the rough and waterworn highland, stretching away to the remote west, not a particle of vegetation was to be seen; but an hour’s journey on foot—it was too rough even for the camels—disclosed some few low-lying parts whence a few thorn-bushes and some grass climbed for a little height up the perpendicular sides of the bare rocks. A few ibex-like animals were feeding in the hollows, and some might be seen leaping about like chamois, seemingly for exercise only, on the highest summits of the barren peaks.

The distance from Bagghareeyeh to Om-Badr is rather more than four days’ journey. The delay of three hours, occasioned by the temporary loss of the camel at starting, was more than made up by travelling for two hours longer on the two succeeding days; and on the fourth day I gave instructions to the “Mahound” to go right on to Om-Badr, and not to stop, as on the preceding days, at sunset. At about two o’clock one of the head-men of the camel-drivers rode up to me and asked whether the caravan might not stop at four o’clock, as on that night there would be a great storm of wind, which was likely to be worse at Om-Badr, as that place was high up in the mountains. His meteorological knowledge surprised me not a little, as the sky appeared to me to be as clear as usual. He was, however, positive, and said it would be well to choose the camp early, and if possible to get into a valley and tie the tent- ropes to the trees, as he was sure the tent pegs would not hold them. On my expressing some doubts as to his prescience, he energetically took hold of my wrist and walked me off to the top of a low hill, when, extending his finger towards the south, he told me to look. I looked and looked again, and continued looking, but could see nothing, and told him so. He seemed to pity my helpless blindness. Mohommed Gadderâb, my own guide, came up shortly after, and pointing, as the other man had pointed, to the south, told me to look, as a storm was to come that night. He described the cloud as resting on the horizon, white at its centre and fading towards its sides into the pale blue of the air. He had seen it since the morning, when it was fainter still. I felt now in a state of utter bewilderment. After partial recovery I decided, however, to have a good long and thoroughly exhaustive gaze: to my eyes there was still nothing to be seen. After my blinding stare I came to the conclusion it was a hoax got up by the Arabs in order to enable them to have a good night’s rest, or even perhaps another _fantasìa_. At five o’clock, however, a cloud began to show itself in the south, and rapidly assumed proportions portending a furious wind. The guide called my attention to it; should he ride on and stop the caravan? I told him “Yes.” He sped like lightning across the desert and overtook the caravan. Its march was arrested, and the camp pitched in the deepest _findable_ hollow; the tent-ropes were tied to the trees, or, where this was not feasible, heavy lumps of rock were brought and placed so as to give additional power of resistance to the tent-pegs.

The whole of the southern sky was now filled with vapoury clouds, some of them floating slowly towards us near the low-lying ground, others chasing each other fast, like the waves of a furious sea, along the tops of the rocks on our distant right, and, over all, one mass of gray dense cloud tearing through the heavens at tempest speed, and promising soon to fill up the whole of the north with darkness as it had already filled the south. Our camp was soon in total obscurity; the host of impenetrable cloud was above us. Swiftly as it moved, the air beneath was calm or nearly so. A few little vapour-clouds rolled slowly over the site of the camp, moistening the walls of the tents, but there was no perceptible wind. Before the horizon to the north was completely hidden from view, a small light began to show itself towards the south. Soon the southern sky again became visible, and within half an hour the whole dome of the heavens was free from the hideous clouds, and full of the beautiful light of the stars. Late on into the night a hot and suffocating wind blew from the south, not severely enough to endanger the stability of the tents, but preventing anything like comfortable sleep. The terrors of the storm itself were spent on the upper air; we had fortunately escaped them.

On the next morning about twenty Arabs, some on horseback, some on foot, were scattered round the camp at about a mile distant, evidently night prowlers from Om-Badr out on a camel-lifting adventure. We had been warned about these people, and had taken precautions to keep our camels in bounds. A short time previous to the acquisition of Darfoor by the Egyptians, Munzinger Pacha, in charge of an expedition, had been attacked here, and in an affray had lost his second in command, and had been compelled to retrace his steps without being permitted to fill up his water-skins.

This tribe of Arabs, the Hamr, were represented as the most warlike and thievish of all the tribes in Darfoor, and were, moreover, reported to be well-armed with double-barrelled guns. We rode up to them after breakfast, and found them an ill-bred and surly lot of fellows, but certainly not of very warlike appearance. Their horses were of the most miserable description, half-starved and sore-backed. Only a few of the riders had saddles, and none of these had girths. The men sat their horses, which seemed only capable of a walking pace, as a tailor sits his board when at work. Those on foot stood leaning on their spears, with the sole of the right foot pressed close against the shin of the left leg—a posture, I believe, purely African, common amongst the Kaffirs of the south, and, from Sir Samuel Baker’s drawings, common amongst the negroes in Central Africa. The Hamr are, however, the only Arab tribe whom I have seen adopt it. The report concerning their arms turned out to be nonsense. Only one of the Arabs, either of those prowling round our camp, or of those we found at Om-Badr itself, possessed a fire-arm, a single-barrelled flint musket, marked with a crown and “G. R. Tower.” Half-way down the barrel was a circular hole, evidently caused by a refractory bullet which, not having been able to find its way out by the muzzle, had forcibly made an aperture for itself. The value of this formidable weapon must, however, have been considerably diminished, owing to the circumstance of its possessor having no ammunition. These amiable and warlike Arabs refused to give us any information or to enter into conversation at all. Mohommed Gadderâb called them by the name of an animal to which all Mohommedans have an invincible repugnance: they only grunted, and this circumstance, I have no doubt, tended to confirm him in his opinion.

In about an hour, from one of the high summits we could see the plain, up among the rocks, where the wells of Om-Badr were situated.

The plain, only half a mile distant from the foot of the mountain on which we stood, presented an interesting sight. Its surface as far as we could see was crowded with animals. Flocks of black sheep and goats, and large herds of brown cattle mixed with white and gray of the thousands of camels, gave the scene a piebald and variegated appearance. Through a gorge leading from the higher plains to the westward, a long and continuous stream of camels was slowly descending, its white continuity broken, here and there, by strings of cattle and sheep. Several large tents were visible on some low sand-hills at the top of the pass along which our own caravan was approaching from the valley below, soon to add its little mite to the numbers on the plain. Before long a row of our tents began to appear, and we came down from our height and were soon in the midst of the crowd.

Mohommed Effendi, the lieutenant of Engineers, had started off with his note-book directly on his arrival, glad of the opportunity to distinguish himself in collecting statistics, the more especially as his services had not been required since our departure from Sotaire. The following were the notes he made and handed to me soon after I came into camp:—

“Men, 1,050; women, 2,100; boys and girls, 3,000; horses, 50; oxen, 150; sheep, 2,400; goats, 1,350; camels, 50,000—every day 10,000 come down to drink; wells, 500.

“Races of Arabs—Hamr, Maganeen, Beni-Hamran.”

I thanked him for the information, which I took every means of verifying, and found pretty correct.

The name Beni-Hamran, “sons of the Hamran,” struck me as rather singular. The home of the Hamran Arabs is on the other side of the Nile, bordering on Abyssinia. Sir S. Baker alludes to them as the “Sword Hunters,” and speaks in terms of admiration of their unrivalled dexterity in hunting all kinds of beasts with the sword only. I mentioned this circumstance to Mohommed Effendi, and pointed out on the map the site of the Hamran or Sword Hunter Arabs. He suggested we should go and have a talk with the shiekh. We found the old man squatted on the ground smoking his “chibook,” and surrounded with camels and cattle, some of them at times so close that there was scarcely room for us to seat ourselves without fear of being trampled upon. As we came up and saluted he did not rise, a very unusual thing in an Arab. The fact was, our caravan was attended by Arabs of the Kabbabbeesh tribe, with whom the Hamr and the allied sub-tribes had long carried on bitter war. The old gentleman did not like the company in which we travelled. We, however, selected comfortable places by his side, and Mohommed Effendi started the following conversation:

“Salaam Aleycoom.”

“Aleycoom es salaam.”

“There are many peoples round the wells, very rich and powerful.”

“Yes, three tribes, all powerful and strict followers of the Prophet. He (the speaker) was the father of one of the tribes.”

“Did the people wander much over the earth?”

“Yes, over the whole earth, to Darfoor, to Wadai, and further to the west; to Khordofan and far to the south, where Allah was not known, to the Kafrs (heathen) for slaves.”

“Did they ever go to the north among the Khabbabbeesh as far as the river?”

“They had had many great wars with the Khabbabbeesh, but they were now brothers. Yes, they went to the river, but very seldom.”

“Where were the fathers of the Beni-Hamran?”

“The fathers were with Allah.”

I told him a great traveller had seen the Hamran tribe on the far side of the river on the borders of the Habeshi.

“Was the great traveller a Beni-Hamran?”

“No.”

“Was he a friend of mine?”

“No.”

“Then he must be wrong. The Hamran Arabs did not cross the river. How could the camels cross? and what would be the good of crossing? There was plenty of food for the camels here.”

“But as the Hamran were at this day on the other side of the river, perhaps the Beni-Hamran had left their fathers many years ago to be independent.”

“The Beni-Hamran had always been independent and free, and owners of many slaves; and no Arab quarrels with his fathers.”

At this point the conversation came to an abrupt termination. The old man rose from his seat, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and, without wishing either of us “good-day,” walked slowly off, and, winding his course among the crowd of camels, was soon lost to our sight.

The question of genealogy which I was so anxious to solve remained, as far as I was concerned, a question still. Whether other of the shiekhs _knew_ anything of the matter is more than I can tell; but all of whom I made inquiries _told_ me about as much as the unceremonious old boor who had just walked off, and that was—_nothing_.

[Decoration]