Chapter XX: Letter XVIII: On the Blue River, Province of Sennâr, Lat. 13°, 2nd March, 1844 (1)

To-day we reach the most southern limit of our African journey. To-morrow we again turn towards the north and homewards. We shall go as far as the neighbourhood of SERO—a place on the boundary between the provinces of Sennâr and Fasokl, for our time will not allow us to do more. From Chartûm I have ascended the river as far as this spot, with Abeken alone. We relinquished the desert journey to Mandera, the rather as the eastern territories are at present insecure from the war in Taka; and we now employ the time, in travelling several days farther across Sennâr, to gain some information about the character of the river and the adjacent country. This journey is worth the trouble, for, from Abu Haras, situated at the influx of the Rahad, between Chartûm and Sennâr, the character of the whole country is completely altered in its soil, vegetation, and animals. I then thought I should like to obtain a view of the Nile valley itself, as far up the river as possible, as the character of this narrow strip of country has had a greater influence on the course of history than any other spot in the whole world.

It is impossible, without incurring danger, or making peculiar preparations, to travel up the White River beyond a few days’ journey, as far as the boundaries of Mohamed Ali’s conquests. After this, there are the SCHILLUKS on the western bank, the DINKAS on the eastern, both native negro nations, who are not very friendly to Northern guests. The Blue River is navigable still farther up, and in historical times, as well as at the present day, was of much greater importance than the White River, as it was the means of communication between the North, and Abyssinia. I should have liked to have penetrated as far as the province of Fasokl, the last under Egyptian rule; but it cannot be combined with the calculation of our time. This evening, therefore, we shall terminate our southern journey.

But I must go back in my reports to Dâmer, where, on the 27th January, I embarked with Abeken upon a boat belonging to Mûsa Bey, the first adjutant of Achmed Pascha, who politely placed it at our disposal. About eight o’clock in the evening we halted for the night at the island of DAL HAUI. We had received a Kawass from Emin Pascha, who came here with Ismael Pascha at the time of the conquest of the country, went with Defterdar Bey to Kordofan (or, as he expresses it, Kordifal), then accompanied him on his avenging march to Schendi, in consequence of the murder of Ismael, and since that time has, for three-and-twenty years, roamed over the whole of the Sudan in all directions. He carries in his head the most complete map of these countries, and has a marvellous memory for names, directions, and distances; so that I have drawn two maps according to his statements, particular parts of which may not be without geographical interest. He has also been in Mecca, and therefore likes to be called Haggi Ibrahim (The Pilgrim Ibrahim). He has great experience in other matters also, and will be extremely useful to us from his long and extensive knowledge of the country.

On the 28th January we halted about mid-day at an island called GOMRA, as we heard that there were some ruins in the vicinity which we were anxious to see. We were obliged to go through a shallow arm of the Nile, and to ride back an hour northwards on the eastern bank. At length, after passing the villages of Motmar and El Akarid, between a third village, SAGADI, and a fourth, GENNA, we found the insignificant ruins of an ancient place, constructed of bricks and strewed over with potsherds.

We returned in the mid-day heat, not in the very best humour, and did not reach BEG´ERAUÎEH in our boat before sunset, near which the Pyramids of Meröe are situated. It is singular that Cailliaud does not mention this spot; he only speaks of the Pyramids of ASSUR, _i. e._ SÛR, or E’ SÛR. This is the name of the whole plain in which the ruins of the town and Pyramids are situated, and also a single portion of Beg´erauîeh, which last, by wrong spelling, is called, in Hoskins, BEGROMI.

Although it was already dark, I nevertheless rode to the Pyramids with Abeken. They are situated a short hour inland, on the first elevation of the low hills which run along in an easterly direction. The moon, which was in its first quarter, feebly illuminated the plain, covered with stones, low bushes, and clumps of reeds. After a rapid ride, we at length reached the foot of a row of Pyramids, closely crowded together, which rose before us in a crescent, as the form of the narrow elevation rendered necessary. To the right, a little behind, another group of Pyramids joined these; a third lies more to the south, and rather more forward in the plain, but too distant to be seen by half moonlight. I fastened the bridle of my donkey-steed to a block of stone, and clambered up the first mound of ruins.

Although the individual Pyramids are not accurately placed according to the quarters of the heavens, as they are in Egypt, nevertheless all the ante-chambers here attached to the Pyramids themselves are turned away from the river, towards the east, doubtless on the same religious grounds which induced the Egyptians to place the unattached temples standing in front of their Pyramids also towards the east; therefore, in Gizeh and Sagâra, towards the river, while their sepulchral chambers are towards the west.

Half looking, half feeling, I found some sculptures on the outer walls of the small sepulchral temple, and I also felt figures and writing on the inner walls. It occurred to me that I had the end of a candle in my saddle-pocket; I lighted this, and then examined several ante-chambers. There I immediately encountered the Egyptian gods, Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Atmu, &c., with their names in the known hieroglyphic character. I also found the name of a king in the first chamber. One of the two Rings contained the emblems of a great Pharaoh of the Old Monarchy, Sesurtesen I., the same which had been adopted by two later Egyptian monarchs, and I here found them, for the fourth time, as the Throne-Name of an Ethiopian king. The sculptures on the remaining sides were not completed. I found some Royal Shields this evening also in another ante-chamber, but not very legible. The inscriptions and representations had altogether been much damaged. The Pyramids have also all of them lost their summits, as in Egypt, and many have been destroyed down to the ground.

Our new Kawass, who did not like to leave us alone in the night time, had immediately followed us. He had a perfect knowledge of the locality, as he had been here a long time with FERLINI, and had assisted him in his researches among the Pyramids. He showed us the spot in which Ferlini, in 1834, had found immured the rich treasure of gold and silver rings.

I also discovered, the same evening, a cased Pyramid, according to the principle of the Egyptian Pyramids, which were afterwards enlarged by superimposed layers of stone. According to the inscriptions and representations of the ante-chambers, these Pyramids were most of them built solely for kings, some of them, perhaps, for their wives and children. Therefore, their great number indicates a tolerably long succession of kings, and a well-established Monarchy, which probably must have remained in a state of tranquillity for a series of centuries.

The event of most importance in this moon and torchlight survey, was not, however, exactly the most cheering. I was unavoidably convinced that on this most renowned spot of ancient Ethiopia, I had nothing before me but the remains, proportionately speaking, of a very late period of art. Even earlier than this, the drawings of Ferlini’s monuments, which I saw for the first time in Rome, and the monuments themselves, which I had just seen in London, impressed me with the opinion that they had been, indeed, sculptured in Ethiopia, but certainly not previous to the first century before the birth of Christ, therefore about the same period to which certain genuine Greek and Roman works belong, which were discovered simultaneously with the Ethiopian treasure. I must now make the same remark upon the monuments in general, which are found not only here but throughout the whole island of Meröe, as well as of all the Pyramids at Beg´erauîeh, and of the temples of Ben Naga, of Naga, and in the Wadi e’ Sofra (the Mesaurât of Cailliaud), which we have since then seen. The representations and inscriptions do not leave the smallest doubt of this, and it will in future be a fruitless task to endeavour to support the favourite supposition of an ancient, brilliant, and renowned Meröe, whose inhabitants were at one time the predecessors and the instructors of the Egyptians in civilisation, by the demonstration of monumental remains from that old period.

This conviction is besides of no small scientific value, and seems even now to throw some light on the historical connection between Egypt and Ethiopia, the importance of which can be only thoroughly demonstrated by the monuments of Barkal. There, I have no doubt, will be found the oldest Ethiopian monuments, although, perhaps, not earlier than the period of Tahraka, who reigned simultaneously over Egypt and Ethiopia in the seventh century before Christ.

The next morning at sunrise we rode back to the Pyramids, and discovered fifteen different kings’ names, some of them, however, in very bad preservation.

We had just completed our survey of the two groups of Pyramids lying to the north-east, and were riding on to the third, which is situated in the plain, not far from the ruins of the town, and is, perhaps, the oldest Necropolis, when we heard shots from the bank, and saw white sails fluttering over the river. Soon afterwards Erbkam, the two Weidenbachs, and Franke, came walking across the plain, and hailed us from a great distance. We had not expected them to arrive so soon, and, therefore, rejoiced still more to see them again. We could now pursue our journey to Chartûm together.

We sailed away about two in the afternoon, and the next morning about ten o’clock reached SCHENDI. We proceeded in the afternoon, spent the night on the island of HOBI, and the following morning arrived at BEN NAGA. Here, we first visited the ruins of two small temples; the one lying towards the west, had Typhonic pillars, instead of columns, but no inscription was to be found on the few remains; in the other temple to the east, some sculptures were preserved on the low remains of the walls of the temple; and also some writing on several circular fragments of columns, but too little to take away any connected ideas from them. Had we made some excavations, we might probably have discovered some kings’ names, but it was impossible to make such an experiment till our return.

We procured some camels for the following day, and about nine o’clock in the morning I started with Abeken, Erbkam, and Max Weidenbach, for NAGA. Such is the name given to the ruins of a town and several temples, which are situated in the eastern desert, between seven and eight hours distant from the Nile. From our landing-place in the vicinity of the only group of palm-trees in the surrounding country, it was only one half hour to the village of BEN NAGA, which is in WADI TERESIB. One hour eastward down the river (for it here flows in a direction from west to east) are the above-mentioned ruins, in WADI EL KIRBEGÂN, near to which we had disembarked the previous day; we left them now on our left hand, and rode in a south-easterly direction into the desert, having here and there some parched bushes; we traversed the valley of El Kirbegân, which, as far as this point, runs outwards from the river, in which we found an encampment of the Ababde Arabs.

Four hours and a half from Ben Naga we came to a single hill in the desert called BUÊRIB. It was on the water-shed between the smaller south-western Wadis (so even the flattest depressions of the ground are called, in which the water runs off, and which we should scarcely call valleys) and the great, broad WADI AUATÊB, which we were now descending, after having left Buêrib at a short distance on our left. In three hours and three-quarters from Buêrib we arrived at the ruins of NAGA.

It was not till we approached the temple that I solved the enigma, which I had hitherto sought in vain to interpret, and on which neither Cailliaud nor Hoskins could offer any explanation; namely, how had it been possible to found and to maintain a large city in the midst of the desert, so far removed from the river. The whole valley of Auatêb is even now cultivated land. We found it far and wide covered with the stubble of Durra. The inhabitants of Schendi, Ben Naga, Fadniê, Selama, Metamme, consequently of both banks of the Nile, come as far as this to cultivate the land and to gather in the Durra. The water of the tropical rains suffices to fertilise this flat but extensive tract of low ground, and in ancient times, when more care was bestowed upon it, a still greater profit must have been derived from this region. During the dry season of the year they must undoubtedly have had large artificial reservoirs, such as we found even now, though without water, near the more remote ruins to the north-west of Naga.

The ruins stand on a projection of a mountain range several hours long, which from them has taken the name of GEBEL E’ NAGA, and stretches out from the south, northwards. WADI AUATÊB passes along its western side towards the river. We arrived about half-past five o’clock, after an uninterrupted ride. On the road we saw the path covered with the marks of gazelles, wild asses, foxes, jackals, ostriches. Lions are also met with here, but we did not see any of their tracks.

I visited the three principal temples before nightfall, all of which belong to a very late period, and do not suggest the ideas of very ancient art, as Cailliaud and Hoskins thought they could recognise. There is, besides, a fourth temple by the side of the three principal temples, of Egyptian architecture, whose well-joined arches, not unpleasantly combined with Egyptian ornaments, not only presupposes them to have been erected when the Roman dominion extended over the world, but even that Roman architects were on the spot. This last temple has no inscriptions. With respect to the three others, the two lying to the south were built by one and the same king; in the representations in both temples he is accompanied by the same queen. But a third royal personage appears behind them having a different name in the two temples. The Throne-Shield of Sesurtesen I. is again attached to the name of the king, although he does not appear to be the same as the King of the Pyramids of Sûr. Besides, both those other personages have assumed old Egyptian Throne-Shields, which might easily mislead us.

The third most northern temple has sustained much injury, and very little writing remains upon it, yet a king is mentioned on the door-posts who differs from the builder of both the other temples.

The figures of the gods are almost wholly Egyptian, but on the southern temple there is a figure unknown in Egypt, with three lions’ heads (a fourth may perhaps be supposed behind) and four arms. This may be the barbaric god specially mentioned by Strabo, whom the Meröites worshipped besides Hercules, Pan, and Isis.

The next morning, the 2nd of February, we again visited the three temples, took some impressions on paper, and then started for the third group of monuments, named by Cailliaud MESAURÂT. This, however, is a term which is here employed to designate all the three groups of ruins, and which only means _pictures_, or walls furnished with pictures. The ruins of Ben Naga are called MESAURÂT EL KIRBEGÂN, because they are situated in WADI EL KIRBEGÂN; it appears that the second group only has retained its old name of NAGA, or MESAURÂT E’ NAGA; the third group situated towards Schendi is called MESAURÂT E’ SOFRA from the mountain basin in which it lies, which is called E’ SOFRA, the table.

We first pursued, for the space of two hours, in a northerly direction the mountain chain of Gebel e’ Naga, in the valley of Auatêb. Then, about half-past twelve, we ascended through the first defile which opens to the right, into a valley situated somewhat higher, E’ SELEHA; it becomes broader behind the first low fore-range, and is luxuriantly overgrown with grass and shrubs; after extending for an hour and a quarter in the direction of S.S.W. to N.N.E., it opens on the left hand into the valley of Auatêb, and straight on into another smaller valley, from which it is separated by Gebel Lagâr. It is this small valley, which from its circular form is called E’ SOFRA; here are the ruins which were also seen by Hoskins, who did not, however, advance as far as Naga. We arrived about a quarter past two, and had not, therefore, been quite four hours coming from Naga to this spot. As we only wished to take a passing hasty survey, we walked through the widely-scattered ruins of the principal building, which Cailliaud held to be a great school, and Hoskins an hospital; and we saw in the few sculptures, which are unaccompanied by inscriptions, that here also we had before us monuments of a late period, probably still more recent than those in Sûr and Naga. We then went to a small temple in the neighbourhood, with pillars on which are represented riders upon elephants, lions, and other strange barbarous scenes. We looked at the huge artificial cisterns, now called Wot Mahemût, which in the dry season must have compensated the inhabitants for the want of the river; and about four o’clock we returned to Ben Naga.

As we emerged from the hills, we met great troops of wild asses, which always kept at a little distance from us, as if they would invite us to hunt them. They are of a grey or greyish-red colour, with white bellies; they all have a black stripe drawn distinctly across the back, and the tip of the tail is also generally black. Many of them are caught when young, but they cannot then even be used for riding or carrying burdens. It is only the next generation which can be employed in that manner. Almost all the tame asses in the south, which come from the Ass Cataract (Schellâl homâr) in Berber, are got from this wild breed, and have the same colour and similar marks.

We encamped soon after sunset in a plain, overgrown with bushes. The camel-drivers and our Kawass were in great terror of lions in this desert till a large fire was kindled, which they kept most carefully alive throughout the night. If a lion only lets his voice be heard near a caravan, which really does sound deep and awful across the wide desert, all the camels run away on every side as if they were mad, and it is difficult to catch them again, frequently not before they have sustained and done much injury. Human beings are not, however, easily attacked. A few days ago a camel was strangled by a lion in our neighbourhood, but on the farther side of the river. A man who was present saved himself on the nearest tree.

On the 3rd of February we again set out about seven in the morning; we left the two Buêribs, the great “blue” and the little “red,” at a considerable distance on our left hand, and shortly before nine o’clock arrived in the valley of El Kirbegân, which we followed for half an hour in the direction of the river. We saw the Mesaurât el Kirbegân in its whole extent on our right, but kept upon the hills till a little after eleven, when we arrived at Ben Naga, and half an hour afterwards once more at our landing-place.

Two hours afterwards we continued our journey in our boat. We made, however, little progress with a strong adverse wind, and saw nothing new, except for the first time a hippopotamus swimming in the water. The next morning we disembarked on the western bank, opposite the village of GÔS BASABIR, to see the ruins of the walls of an old fortress, with towers of defence, which surrounded the summit of a hill. The space enclosed was about 300 paces in diameter. In the afternoon we approached the Schellâl (the Cataract) of GERASCHAB, the higher mountain ranges lying before us, closed in upon each other, and at length formed a mountain hollow, seemingly without any outlet; this was, however, to our surprise, near at hand, for we turned to our left into a narrow defile, which widened into a high and wild rocky valley; we followed it for nearly an hour before again emerging on the other side into another plain. The eruptive granite ranges of QIRRE pass on the eastern side of the river into RAUIÂN, “the thirsty quenched;” while to the west, some distance from the river, there is ATSCHAN “the thirsty,” also rising up in a detached form.

The 5th February we landed about eleven in the morning at TAMANIÂT. Mohammed Saïd, the former treasurer of the late Achmed Pascha, whose acquaintance we had made in Dâmer, had given us a letter to one of the sub-officials there, which contained instructions to him to deliver to us the fragment of an inscription which had been found in Soba. It belonged to the centre of a marble table, which was inscribed on both sides with Greek or Coptic letters of a late period. The signs, which were not difficult to read, neither contained Greek nor Coptic words; only the name ⲅⲉⲱⲣⲅⲓⲟ.. could be deciphered. The same evening we arrived in CHARTÛM. This name signifies an elephant’s trunk, and probably was derived from the form of the narrow tongue of land on which the town is situated, between the two Nile rivers which unite at this spot.

My first visit with Abeken was to Emin Pascha, who had reached Chartûm before us. He received us in a very friendly manner, and would not allow us to leave him the whole morning.

A magnificent breakfast, consisting of thirty dishes, which we partook of at his house, gave us a most curious insight into the secrets of the Turkish culinary art; as I learned from our highly-fed Pascha, it resembles the most accomplished systems of the latest French kitchens, in obeying the refined regulations of a fastidious taste in the preparation and arrangement of food. Soon after the first dishes, mutton, roasted on the spit, is brought in, which cannot be dispensed with at any Turkish meal. Then follow various courses of dishes of meats and vegetables, solid and liquid, sour and sweet, and a certain repetition of changes is observed in the successive dishes, in order to keep up the keenness of the appetite. Pillau, boiled rice, always forms the conclusion.

The external preparations for such an entertainment are somewhat as follows. A great, round, metal tray, with a flat border, about three feet in diameter, is placed on a low frame, and serves as a table, round which five or six persons seat themselves on cushions or coverlets; the legs vanish beneath the body, in the ample folds of the dress; as to the hands, the left must be invisible, it would be quite improper to let it ever be seen during meals. The right hand must alone be active. No such thing as a plate is to be seen, no more than knives and forks. The table is covered with deeper or shallower, covered or uncovered dishes, which are constantly changed, so that but a very few morsels can be taken from each. Particular dishes, however, such as roast meat, cold milk with cucumbers, &c., remain longer on the table, and one returns to them more frequently. Both before and after dinner, the hands are of course washed. A servant, or slave, kneeling, holds in one hand a metal basin, in the middle of which lies a piece of soap, in a little projecting saucer, expressly used for the purpose; with the other he pours water from a metal pitcher over the hands, and a fine, ornamentally embroidered towel hangs over his arm for drying them.

After dinner the pipe is immediately presented, coffee handed round, and then one may retire. The Turks are in the habit of making this the period of their mid-day repose, till Asser. But before we parted from our host, a number of weapons were brought, belonging to the savage nations living farther up the country, lances, bows, arrows, clubs, and a king’s sceptre, which he sent to the boat for me, as a present to his guest.

We afterwards visited our countryman, NEUBAUER, the apothecary of the province, who has been very unfortunate: a short time since, he was removed from his post by the late Achmed Pascha; but he has now been again appointed apothecary by Achmed Pascha Menekle, through the intercession of Dr. Koch. We then went to a Pole who has settled here—Hermanovich, the head-physician of the province, who, in consequence of an order from the Pascha, offered us his house, to which we went the following day; it had lately been newly fitted up; there was a garden beside it, and a great court-yard, which was very useful for unpacking and repairing our chests and tents.

The next day the Pascha returned our visit. He came on horseback. We handed him coffee, pipes, sherbet, and showed him some drawings and pictures from Egypt, in which he was interested merely from curiosity. He is a large, corpulent man, a Circassian by birth, and therefore, like most of his countrymen, better informed than the Turks in general. I saw a rich collection of all kinds of birds of the Sudan, at the house of a Syrian, IBRAHIM CHÊR; there were about 300 different species, and between twenty and thirty choice specimens of each.

On one of the following days, I took a walk with Abeken and Erbkam to the opposite bank of our tongue of land on the WHITE RIVER, which we then followed up to its junction with the Blue; its waters are in fact whiter, and have a less pleasant taste than those of the Blue, because at a higher point it flows slowly through several lakes, the standing water of which imparts an earthy and less pure taste to it. I have filled some bottles with the water of the Blue, and White Rivers, which I shall take away with me sealed up.

On the occasion of a more recent and friendly visit of the Pascha, we met the brother of the former Sultan of Kordofan (who was himself also called Mak or Melek) and the Vizier of the Sultan NIMR (Tiger) of Schendi. The latter still lives in Abyssinia, whither he fled, after having, in the year 1822, burned the conqueror of his country, ISMAEL PASCHA, a son of Mohammed Ali, and all his officers, after a nocturnal banquet which he had prepared for him in a somewhat lonely house.

On the 14th, we made an excursion up the WHITE RIVER, but were soon obliged to turn back, because it has so little current, that, on account of the north wind which of late has constantly been blowing, our return threatened to be tedious. The banks of the White River are barren, and the few trees which formerly stood in the neighbourhood of Chartûm are now cut down, and have been used for building or fuel. There is a larger mass of water in the White River than in the Blue, and even after its junction it preserves its course, so that the Blue River must be viewed as the secondary river, but the White as the true Nile. Their different waters can be distinguished beside each other for a long time after their junction.

On the 16th February, I sent for some DINKA slaves, to interrogate them about their language. They were, however, so dull of apprehension, that I could only with difficulty get out of them the words for numbers up to a hundred, and a few separate pronouns. The languages of the Dinkas and the Schilluks, who dwell several days’ journey distant up the White River, the former on the eastern bank, the latter on the western, are as little known grammatically as most of the other languages of Central Africa; I therefore requested the Pascha to procure me some intelligent persons who were well acquainted with those languages. This was impossible for the present, but we shall attend to it on our return.

Meanwhile our purchases and repairs being completed, I hurried on the departure as much as possible. The house of Hermanovich will also be at our disposal on our return; it is built in a convenient manner, and is very airy. I had a prospect of the oldest house in the town from my window, whose pointed straw roof peeped over our wall. These pointed straw huts, called TUKELE, are the characteristic buildings of this country, and are found almost exclusively in the south. But as Chartûm is a new town, the small number of old huts have disappeared, with the exception of this one, and all the houses are built of unburnt bricks.

About mid-day, on the 17th February, we embarked on board our boats. I sailed to the south with Abeken up the Blue River, partly to become acquainted with its natural character, partly to view the ruins of Soba and Mandera; our other travelling companions, who had nothing to occupy them farther up, sailed northwards back to Meröe, in order to sketch the monuments there.

The following day we landed on the eastern bank, where great heaps of red bricks, destined for exportation, proclaimed the vicinity of the ruins of SOBA. At the present day, unburnt bricks alone are made throughout the country, therefore all the ruins of burnt stones must have belonged to an earlier period. This material for building is transported in great quantities from Soba as far as Chartûm, and beyond it.

We disembarked, and had scarcely got beyond the thorny bushes nearest to the bank, when we perceived the overturned mounds of bricks, covering a large plain, possibly an hour in circumference. Some larger heaps might be the remains of the Christian churches which are described by Selîm of Assuan (in Macrizi), in the tenth century, as magnificently decorated with gold, when Soba was still the capital of the kingdom of ALOA. We were shown the spot where some time ago a stone lion is said to have been discovered, which is now in the possession of Churshid Pascha, in Cairo. Nowhere could walls, nor the form of buildings, be recognised; it was only on the mound to the south, at a little distance off, that we found some hewn yellow blocks of sandstone, and a low wall; on another heap lay several rough slabs of a black slaty stone.

The country round Soba, like this, is flat both far and wide to the base of the hills in front of the Abyssinian range, and the ground, especially at this season, is arid and black; the denser vegetation is confined to the bank of the river; farther off there are nothing but single trees, now in greater, now in fewer numbers.

I promised the sailors a sheep, on condition that we should reach KAMLÎN betimes, for there was a strong wind, which made us very slow in our progress; our boat, besides, is not a fast one, the sailors are inexperienced, and from the low state of the water, the boat easily sticks fast in the sand; we sailed on almost the whole night through, and reached Kamlîn about eight in the morning.

The ancient place of the same name lies one half-hour farther up the river, and is composed of a few huts. The houses near which we landed belong to a number of factories, which Nureddin Effendi, a Coptic Catholic Egyptian, who went over to Islam, established, in common with the late Achmed Pascha, more than four years ago, and which yield a rich profit. A simple, homely German, who has never given way to the bad customs of the East, born in the neighbourhood of Würzburg, by name Bauer, has established a Soap and Brandy Manufactory, of which he takes the management himself. A Sugar and Indigo Factory is conducted by an Arab. Bauer has settled farther to the south than any European we have ever met with in Mohammed Ali’s dominions, and we were rejoiced to find such a good termination to the long but not very agreeable chain of Europeans, most of them degenerated in civilisation, who have preferred the Turkish government to that of their Fatherland.[43]

He has an old German housekeeper with him, Ursula, a comical, good-natured soul, to whom it was no less a holiday to receive German guests again, than it was to himself. With joyful alacrity she rummaged out some European utensils, and the only fork that was still in preservation, and served up fried chickens, saurkraut, and some small sausages, with excellent wheaten bread; at last actually a cherry cake, of baked European cherries (for our fruits do not grow in Egypt), in short, a home repast such as we never expected to see in this Ultima Thule.

On a pedestal in front of Bauer’s house we found the most southern Egyptian sculpture which we have met with: a sitting statue of OSIRIS, with the usual attributes, carved out of black granite; a portion of it is mutilated, and it is of a late style, about 2½ feet high; it had been found in SOBA, and is not devoid of interest, being the only monument of Egyptian art from this town.

The European arrangement of Bauer’s rooms made a strange impression on us, here in the midst of the black population in the south. A wooden Black Forest house-clock, with weights, beat in regular time; some half-broken European chairs stood round the fixed table, a small book-shelf was placed behind it, with a selection of the German classics and historical works; in the corner the Turkish divan, which could not be dispensed with even here. Above the great table, and beside the canopied bed in the opposite corner, hung bell-pulls, which communicated with the kitchen. An inquisitive Nesnas ape looked in at the grated window next the door; and across the little court-yard we saw the busy Ursula, in a crimson-flowered gown, tripping hither and thither among little naked black slave-boys and girls, ordering them to do this and that with a somewhat scolding voice, and peeping into the steaming-pots in the adjoining kitchen. We saw nothing of her the whole morning; not even during the excellent and savoury repast which she had prepared for us; it was only after dinner that she presented herself, with many curtseys, to receive our commendations. She lamented over the insufficiency of her cooking apparatus, and vehemently reproached Herr Bauer because he had no intentions of leaving this detestable, dirty, hot country, although he had promised her to do so from one year to the other. She came hither with Bauer, and has been eleven years in the country, and four years in Kamlîn. He intends to return to Germany in another year, to settle in Styria or Thuringia with his savings, and, like his father, to be a peasant again.

After rising from table, the son of Nureddin Effendi also sent us a Turkish dinner, ready cooked, of twelve to fifteen dishes, which however, after our European repast, we left to the servants. We had also seen the factories that morning, and had tasted the fine brandy (called Marienbad), which Bauer prepares chiefly from sugar-cane and dates. The business seemed to be in the best order, and even the cleanliness, so unusual in this country, of the rooms, the vessels, and utensils, were proofs of the solid basis upon which this factory, worked by slaves alone, is conducted. The pleasant impression made upon us by this visit was also considerably increased by discovering that Bauer possessed a second piece of the above-mentioned marble inscription, which had been discovered in the ruins of Soba. He presented me with the fragment, which was easily joined with the other piece, though we had still not got the complete inscription. The fragment shows the traces of twelve lines on the one side, and of nine on the other. The characters can be distinctly read here also; but the name ⲓⲁⲕⲱⲃ is alone intelligible. It is either very barbarous Greek, or a peculiar language formerly spoken in Soba. In fact, we know, through Selîm, that the inhabitants of Soba had their sacred books in the Greek language, but translated them also into their own.

After we had also paid a visit to the son of Nureddin Effendi, we started with the promise to call upon him again on our return.

From Kamlîn the banks continue at an equal elevation. The character of a river valley is lost. There is no longer a deposit of black earth; the precipitous and high banks consist of a primitive soil, and a calcareous conglomerate, which, by Bauer’s account, can be easily burnt into plaster.

On the morning of the 21st we came to a considerable bend of the river towards the east; the wind became, on that account, so unfavourable, that our Kawass disembarked, to press into our service people from the neighbourhood to draw our boat along. I walked for several hours along the western bank, as far as ARBAGI, a deserted village, built of black bricks, but on the remains of a still older place, as I discovered from the walls of burnt bricks. This place was formerly the chief centre of the commerce of the Sudan, which, at a later period, was transferred to Messelemîeh. Soon after this we saw the two most northerly growing BAOBABS, which here are called HÓMARA. These giant trees of the creation (Adansonia digitata) become more and more frequent, south of this spot, and at Sero they are among the common trees of the country. One of the stems which I paced round, measured above 60 feet in circumference, and was certainly not one of the largest of its kind, as they are still not numerous here. At this season they were leafless, and stretched out their bare branches far above the surrounding green trees, which looked like low bushes beside them. I found their fruit, which is called GUNGULES,[44] here and there among the Arabs; they resemble small gourds, in the form of pears, and have a light hairy surface. If the hard, tough shell is broken, a number of kernels are found inside, which are surrounded by a dry, sweetish, sourish pulp, which is nevertheless pleasant to the taste. The leaves are digitate.

On the 22nd of February we arrived on the western bank, at a small village, whose inhabitants, men, women, and children, fled with terror at our approach across the sandy plain to the wood, probably because they were afraid of being pressed to draw the boat on farther. On the opposite bank there was another village, and from it we saw a magnificent procession of men, dressed out in the Arabian and Turkish costume, march down to the river with some beautifully bridled horses. It was the Kaschef, and the principal Sheikh of ABU HARAS, who had heard about us from Achmed Pascha, as we had intended to go from this spot into the desert to Mandera with camels and guides. The horses were intended for us, and we therefore rode to the house of the Kaschef, to make some more inquiries about the antiquities of Mandera and Qala. As the desert road to the shore of the Red Sea leads from here by that place, we found several people who had passed near it. However, by what I gathered from all the accounts, there seem to be only some hills in the form of a kind of fortress at both these places, or, at the most, some roughly-built walls, intended to protect the caravans, but no ancient buildings or hieroglyphic inscriptions. In Qala there might be some camels and horses, also, scratched into the rock by Arabs or other people, such as we have frequently seen in the Great Desert near the well of Murhad, and in other places.

We therefore determined to relinquish this desert journey, and to go farther up the river instead, that we might become acquainted, as far as our time permitted, with the natural character of the Nile river, its banks, and neighbouring inhabitants.

After a short quarter of an hour from Abu Haras, we came to the mouth of the RAHAD, which, in the rainy season, conveys a considerable mass of water into the Nile, but was now nearly dry, and had only a little stagnant water, which next month may perhaps also disappear.

I left the boat as often as possible, to get acquainted with the banks. To go farther inland was of itself interdicted chiefly by the wood, which clothes both sides of the river, and is nearly impenetrable. There, in luxuriant splendour, grow the shady, high-domed tamarind-tree, the tower-like hómara (Baobab), the many-branched gemús (sycamore-tree), and the various kinds of the brittle, gum-yielding sont-trees. Creeping plants, often the thickness of a man’s body, climb up their branches like gigantic serpents, in innumerable windings, to their very summits, and down again to the ground, where, along with the low shrubs, they fill up every gap between the huge stems. In addition to this, scarcely one of ten among the trees or shrubs has not thorns, which renders any attempt to penetrate the close thicket not only dangerous, but impossible. Several among them—for instance, the sittere-tree—have thorns placed together in pairs, and in such a manner, that one thorn bends forwards, the other back; if any one, therefore, approaches the branches carelessly, he may be sure that his clothes will carry away with them some unavoidable signs, not to be obliterated here without difficulty, and then imperfectly. Some other thorny trees look extremely ornamental, and growing in more open situations, they rise like slender young birches. We distinguished two species which are usually joined together, and can only be known from one another because the bark of the one stem is of a brilliant red colour up to the outermost little branches, like a growth of blood-vessels, while that of the other is of a dark black colour. Both of them have glistening long white thorns, which, with the little green leaves, rise up with a sharp outline, as if they had been painted with the brush.

Scarcely one of the birds, which frequently hovered around us in large numbers, were known to me, even in Egypt. I shot many of them, and had them stuffed by our cook, Siriân. Among them were some beautiful silver-grey falcons (suqr schikl), guinea-fowls (gedâd el wadi), with knobs of horn on the nose, and blue lappets on both sides of the head; black and white rhinoceros birds (abu tuko) with huge beaks; some birds quite black, with a bright crimson breast (abu labba); large brown and white eagles (abu tôk), one of which, with outspread wings, measured six feet; smaller brown eagles, the _hedâja_, and black and white ones, which are called _ráchama_. These last, which are much more numerous towards Egypt, are the same which we are in the habit of seeing among the hieroglyphics. On the bank there are also great numbers of black and white plovers, furnished with black curved spines on their wing-joints, and the long-legged, completely white, _abu baqr_ (cow-birds), who are in the habit of grazing on the backs of the buffaloes and cows.

We saw great bats frequently flying about in broad daylight; their long golden-brown wings look bright through the branches, and suddenly they hang head downwards on the branches like great yellow pears, and can then easily be shot. They have long ears, and a strange trumpet-like nose.

We also hunted the MONKEYS, but from their agility they were very difficult to reach. One day we found an immense tree, quite full of monkeys; some of them hastily came down on our approach, and fled to a distant thicket; others hid themselves among the foliage, quite at the top; but some of them who considered both methods of escape dangerous, sprang with inconceivably bold leaps from the uppermost branches of the tall tree, which might have been about 100 feet high, to the smaller trees standing near, whose thorny branches bent down beneath their weight without letting them fall; they thus gained their end, and escaped my gun.

The CROCODILES become more numerous the farther south we go. The tongues of the sandy islands are often covered with them. They generally lie in the sun, close to the edge of the water, open their mouths, and seem to sleep, but do not allow any one to approach them; but even if they are hit by the shot they immediately dive into the river. It is therefore very difficult to obtain one. Our Kawass only once made such a good shot at a young crocodile, about three feet long, that it was unable to get back to the water. It was brought to the boat, where it lived for several days afterwards, to the terror of our little Nesnas monkey, Bachît.

It is no less difficult to approach the HIPPOPOTAMI, which we have sometimes seen in great numbers, but with their heads alone above the water. Once only a young hippopotamus stood quite clear out of the water on a sandy island; it allowed us to come unusually near. The Kawass shot, and hit it, naturally without the ball penetrating the thick hide, whereupon the clumsy creature, with its unshapely head, its fat belly, and short elephant legs, galloped off in a most comical manner to reach the water close beside him, and immediately disappeared. They generally are in the habit of coming on land only in the night, and they do much injury in the fields of Durra and other plantations, by treading down and devouring. It is not known that a hippopotamus was ever caught alive here.

We saw no lions, but we heard their roaring in the distance throughout the starlight night; there is something very solemn in the deep and sonorous voice of this royal beast.

The 24th of February we came to a second tributary river of the Nile, the DENDER, which is larger than the Rahad. I went up part of it to see (which was impossible at its mouth) whether the water was still flowing, and farther up I discovered that, where the still water had collected into small canals, certainly a very feeble current yet existed; in the rainy season the Dender must rise more than twenty feet, as may be seen by its bed; I found its banks were cultivated with cotton bushes, gourds, and other useful plants.

The heat is not excessive, in the morning about eight o’clock it is usually 23° R.; about mid-day till about five o’clock, 29°; and about eleven o’clock at night it is 22° (83¾°, 97¼°, 81½° Fahr.).

We spend our evenings in our boat; here I make our Kawass, Hagi Ibrahim, inform us about the geography; or I take some Nubian sailors into my cabin to learn their language. I have already made a long vocabulary in the Nubian language; comparing it with other lists in Rüppell and Cailliaud, I found many words in the Koldági language spoken in the southern territories of Kordofan which agree with them; this proves there is an intimate connection between the two languages. The Arabs are in the habit of calling the Nubian language _lisân rotâna_, which I at first supposed to be its actual name; but it only means a foreign tongue different from the Arabic. They do not, therefore, only speak of a _Rotâna Kenûs_, _Mahass_, _Donqolaui_, when they mean to designate the three Nubian dialects, but also of a _Rotâna Dinkaui_, _Schilluk_—even of a Rotâna _turki_ and _franki_, thus likewise of Turkish and French; _i. e._ of European gibberish. The same error is the cause of the now received designation of the Nubian as the Berber, and of their language as the Berber language; for this is not the name of the people, nor of their language, as is generally thought, but originally means only the people speaking a foreign tongue, the _Barbaros_.

On the 25th of February we disembarked at SABA DOLEB; I searched for ruins, but only found high domes in the form of bee-hives, built well and solidly of bricks, about 20 feet high, and closely resembling the Greek Thesauri, constructed of horizontal layers, lapping over inwardly. They are tombs of holy Arab Sheikhs of a late period; the inhabitants of the village could not tell us the date of their erection. Beneath the cupola, and in the centre of the building, which is between 15 and 18 feet wide, there is the long narrow tomb of the saint, surrounded with larger stones, and covered with a number of small stones, which, according to a superstition, must necessarily amount to a thousand; I found six domes similar to these, most of them half, some wholly fallen to pieces; two, however, in very good preservation, which are even still visited; a seventh, probably the most recent, was built of unburnt bricks.

At WAD NEGUDI, a village situated to the west of the Nile, we found the first DILÊB PALMS, with slender naked stems and small bushy crowns, resembling, at a distance, the Date Palm, but when near, from their leaves, like the Doum Palm. Their fruit is round, like that of the Doum Palm, but of a larger size. These trees are said to be very abundant on the tributary rivers towards the east; but here, on the Nile, they are only to be found within a very small tract of land. The leaves are regularly divided like a fan into a great number of connected folds, and the leaf-stalk has strong serrated notches. The Rais of our boat, who was with me, sawed off another leaf with one of these leaf-stalks; I had it brought to the boat, to take it away with us. It is divided into sixty-nine points, and is five feet and a quarter long, from that part of the stalk where the fan begins, although it is still young, and therefore its fan is still completely closed. Another larger one, which had just unfolded itself, we set up in the boat as an umbrella, and sat beneath its shade. We were obliged to make a path to those palm-trees through gigantic woods of grass, which shoot up stiff and thick like corn-fields, and cover large plains. The points of the blades towered up five or six feet above our heads, and even the tall camels, which are bred here, could hardly look over it.