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

On the 26th February we arrived at the village of ABU EL ABAS, on the eastern bank. It is a chief town of this district, and the Kaschef who lives here is placed over 112 villages. I there purchased a dog-ape from a Turkish Kawass for a few piastres. This is the holy ape of the ancient Egyptians, the Cynocephalus, which was dedicated to Thoth and the Moon, and appears as the second among the four Gods of Death. It is interesting to me to have a creature about me for some little time, which I have seen innumerable times upon the monuments, and thereby to observe the faithful apprehension and representation of its essential and characteristic appearances in the ancient Egyptian sculpture. It is remarkable that this ape, so peculiar to Egypt in ancient times, is now only found in the south, and even there, it is not very common. How many species of animals and plants, even manners and customs of men, with which we become acquainted through the monuments of Egypt, can only now be found in the most southern parts of ancient Ethiopia, so that now many representations, for instance in the tombs of Benihassan, seem to delineate scenes in this country rather than in Egypt. There is no special name here for the Cynocephalus, only the general one, _qird_ (large monkey). Its head, hair, and colour, are not unlike those of a dog, and hence its Greek name. Sometimes also it barks and snarls like a dog. It is still young, and very good-natured, but far more intelligent than Abeken’s pretty little Nesnas ape. It is extremely ludicrous when it wishes to get something good to eat, which we have in our hands; it then lays back its ears on its head, and knows how to express the utmost delight, but remains sitting quiet like a good child, only chattering with the lips, like an old wine-bibber. At the sight of the crocodile, however, all the hair of its body bristled up; it uttered piercing shrieks, and could scarcely be held down from terror.

On the 27th February we reached SENNÂR, the celebrated ancient capital of the Sudan, whose king, before the conquest of the country by Ismael Pascha, had dominion as far as Wadi Halfa, and ruled over a number of smaller kings who paid him tribute. One would not suspect, from the present aspect of the place, that only a short time since it was such a powerful royal residence. Between six and seven hundred pointed straw huts, Tukele, surrounded the piles of red-brick ruins, where formerly the royal mansion stood. These bricks are now employed for building an abode for Solimân Pascha, who is to reside in Sennâr; it was already so far complete that the Wakil[45] of the absent Pascha was able to hold his divan within it. We found him there, just as he was sitting in judgment. Many other people, Sheikhs and Turks, were present; among them the Sheikh Sandalôba, the chief of the Arabian merchants, and a relative of the Sultâna Nasr, whose acquaintance we afterwards made in the village of Sorîba, which she makes her royal residence. We paid a visit to this distinguished man in his own house, with which honour he seemed much gratified. His principal apartment is a dark, lofty hall, with a roof resting on two pillars and four pilasters, upon which we mounted to obtain a view over the town.

Meanwhile an anqareb was prepared for us, to sit upon in the court-yard; they brought us mead (honey with water), and led a hyæna out of the stable, here called Marafil, and two young lions, the largest of which, belonging to Solimân Pascha, and two wethers, were taken to the boat, as a present from his Wakil. I had the creature fastened down in the hold, and as a welcome immediately received a violent scratch on my hand from his sharp claws. His body is now above two feet long, and his voice has already become a strong tenor. There is a most tumultuous scene now every morning on our, not very large, boat, when we drink our tea at an early hour in front of the cabin; on each side of the door, a monkey is making its merry leaps, and when the lion is released from the hold of the vessel, and on the deck, which is given to him during the day, we are obliged to place our cups and pitchers in safety, as he endeavours to reach them with his clumsy, but already strong claws.

On the 29th of February, about nine in the morning, we arrived at ABDÎN. The 1st of March the wind was unfavourable to us, and we made very little progress, so that we had plenty of time at our disposal for shooting birds. Towards evening I came to a village romantically situated in a creek formed by the river, spreading out at this point. Many huts, built of straw, extended their pointed roofs upwards between the branches and thick foliage of the trees. Narrow crooked paths, forming a real labyrinth, led from one hut to the other, between thorns and trunks of trees; within the huts, and in front of them, the black families were lying, the children playing by a feeble lamp-light. I asked for some milk, but was told to apply at an Arab village in the neighbourhood, to which I was led by a man armed with a spear, the universal weapon of the country. Making our way through thin shrubs and tall grass, we reached the large troops of cattle belonging to the Arabs, who had raised their mat huts round the pasture ground. The Fellahs who have settled here are much browner than the wandering Arabs, though they are not negroes, but they appear by race to be connected with the Nubian stock.

The 2nd of March we landed on an island close to the eastern bank. At a short distance from the landing-place the Rais discovered a broken crocodile egg, at a spot where there was some newly turned up ground. He dug down with his hands, and found forty-four eggs lying beside each other three feet deep in the sand. They were still covered with a slimy coat, as they had been only laid the previous day or during the night. Crocodiles prefer coming out of the river on a windy night, they bury their eggs in the ground, cover them over, and the wind soon disperses all traces of the disturbed earth. A few months afterwards the young ones creep out. The eggs are like large goose’s eggs, but as much rounded off at both ends as these are only at the blunt end. I had some of them boiled, they are eatable, but have a disagreeable taste; therefore I willingly left them to the sailors, who devoured them with a hearty appetite.

We landed at the forsaken village of DÁHELA on the eastern bank, from which I proceeded alone a distance of about three-quarters of an hour inland. The character of the vegetation continues the same. The ground is dry and level, the small hills and valleys which intersect it are not the original forms of the ground, but seem only to have been produced by rain. The farthest point I aimed at was a great tamarind-tree which towered up splendidly from the lower trees and bushes, and round which were fluttering a number of green and red birds hitherto unknown to me.

On my road, I first came to a settlement, Kumr betá Dáhela, where the inhabitants of the village I mentioned above are accustomed to keep their _villeggiatura_. They only remain here during the dry months, and wander back in the beginning of the rainy season to their more solidly built village on the bank of the river. The last village that I reached is called ROMÂLI, a little above the place which is marked SERO on the map, and which is situated at the 13° of north latitude. On the hot and fatiguing road back, I was present at a burial; silent and serious, without sound or lamentation, two corpses wrapped in white cloths were borne by men on anqarebs, and were laid in a grave several feet deep, in the wood, close to the passing road. Perhaps they had died of the cholera-like plague, which we hear has broken out with virulence in these southern parts.

We would willingly have gone up, as far as Fazoql, into the last province in Mohammed Ali’s dominions, to become acquainted with the complete change in the character of the country, which then again occurs, beginning at Rosêres, and exhibiting so many phenomena, plants and animals, peculiar to the tropics; but our time had come to an end.

The Rais received orders to lower the sails and masts; by which the boat at once lost its dignified appearance, and it floated down with the current of the river like a wreck. Soon the agreeable silence in the vessel, which had hitherto hastened on as if of its own accord, was interrupted by the shrill and discordant singing of the rowers, struggling against the wind.

On the 4th of March we again arrived at Sennâr, and on the morning of the 8th reached Wed Médineh. This place is almost as important as Sennâr. A regiment of soldiers is here in garrison with the only band of music in the Sudan, and with two cannons. We were immediately visited by the chief clerk of the regiment, Seïd Haschim, one of the most distinguished people of the place, with whom we had formerly become acquainted in Chartûm.

We determined to go from this on a visit to the Sultâna Nasr (Victoria) in SORÎBA, which is about an hour and a half inland, partly to learn something of the character of the country farther removed from the river, partly to gain some notion of the court of an Ethiopian princess. Seïd Haschim offered his dromedaries and asses, and to accompany us himself on this expedition. We therefore set out with him in the afternoon over the hot, black plain, where only a few trees were scattered here and there, and soon got over the uninteresting ground on our active animals.

NASR is the sister of the most powerful and the richest King (Melek) in the Sudan, the IDRIS WED (_i. e._ WELLED, the son or descendant of) ADLÂN, who now indeed is under the supremacy of Mohammed Ali, but yet rules over several hundred villages in the province of El Fungi; his title is Mak el Qulle, King of the Qulle Mountains. One of his ancestors was called ADLÂN, and the whole family at present is named after him; his father was the same Mohammed (Wed) Adlân, who at the period of the victorious campaign of Ismael Pascha, appropriated to himself the greater part of the power belonging to the legitimate but feeble Bâdi, King of Sennâr, but who afterwards, at the instigation of a second Pretender, Reg´eb, was murdered. When Ismael approached, and Reg´eb had fled with his adherents into the Abyssinian mountains, King Bâdi joined the children and the party of Mohammed Adlân, and submitted to the Pascha, who made him a Sheikh over the country, had the murderers of Mohammed Adlân empaled, and bestowed great power and riches on his children Reg´eb and Idris Adlân. Their sister Nasr was also treated with great respect, which was still more increased because she was descended, on the mother’s side, from the legitimate royal house itself. On that account she is also called _Sultâna_, Queen. Her first husband was Mohammed Sandalôba, a brother of Hassan Sandalôba, whom we had visited in Sennâr. He died a long time ago, but by him she had a daughter, Dauer (the Light), who married a great Sheikh, Abd el Qader, but she was afterwards separated from him, and now always resides with her mother in Sorîba. The second husband of Nasr is Mohammed Defalla, the son of one of her father’s viziers. He was just then with Ahmed Pascha Menekle, on the campaign (_Ghazua_, out of which the French have made _Razzia_) in Taka. But even when he is at home, on account of her noble birth, she continues mistress in the house.

A great preference for the female sex seems to have been a very universal custom since ancient times in these southern countries. We must recollect how frequently we find reigning Queens of Ethiopia mentioned. In the campaigns of Petronius, Candace is well known, a name which, according to Pliny, was given to all the Ethiopian Queens; according to others, only to the mother of the King. In the pictures at Meröe, also, we sometimes see very warlike, and doubtless reigning, Queens represented. According to Makrizi, the genealogies of the Beg´as, who I consider to be the direct descendants of the Meröitish Ethiopians, and the ancestors of the present Bischâris, were not counted by the men, but by the women; and the inheritance did not go to the son of the deceased, but to the son of the sister, or of the daughter of the deceased. In like manner, according to Abu-Sela, among the Nubians, the sister’s son always had the preference of his own son in the succession to the throne; and, according to Ibn Batuta, the same custom existed among the Messofites, a negro people lying to the west. Even now the household and chief offices belonging to the courts of several southern princes are wholly filled by women. Ladies of distinction are in the habit of allowing their nails to grow an inch long, as a sign that their duty consists in commanding, and not in working; a custom we have lately seen in the representations of the unshapely and corpulent Queens of Meröe.

When we arrived in SORÎBA, we stepped through a peculiar gate-house into the great square court-yard, which passes round the principal building, and then into an open lofty hall, the roof of which rested on four pillars, and four pilasters. The narrow beams of the ceiling jut out several feet above the simple architrave, and form the immediate support of the flat roof; the whole entrance reminded me much of the open façades of the tombs of Benihassan. In the hall there stood some beautiful furniture of Indian work in ebony, some broad anqarebs, with frames for the fly-nets. Magnificent coverlets were immediately brought in, and sherbet, coffee, and pipes handed round; the vessels were made of gold and silver. Black slave girls in light white dresses, which are fastened round the hips, and drawn over the bosom and shoulders, handed the refreshments, and looked most strange with their half-braided, half-combed wigs. The Queen did not however appear; perhaps she shrank from showing herself to Christians; we were only able to see some women who were standing behind a half-opened door, which re-closed, and to whom we ourselves might have been an object of curiosity. I therefore sent word to the Sultâna, through Seïd Haschim, that we had come to pay a visit to herself, and we now begged we might be permitted to pay our respects to her. Upon which, soon afterwards, a strong wooden door, cased with metal, which led from the inner chambers to the hall, opened wide, and Nasr, with free and dignified steps, walked in. She was wrapped in long, finely-woven linen, with coloured borders, and underneath she wore wide, party-coloured trousers of a darker hue. The female household followed her, eight or ten girls in white dresses, bordered with red, and ornamented sandals. Nasr sat down before us in a friendly and natural manner; she only sometimes drew her dress before her mouth and the lower part of her face, an Oriental custom which is universal in Egypt among women, but which is less practised in this country. She replied to the salutations which I addressed to her through the Dragoman, with an agreeable voice, but only remained a short time with us, and then again retired through the same door.

We were now permitted to see the interior of the house, with the exception of her own apartments, which were in a small adjoining house; and we got upon the roof to have a view over the village. We afterwards took a walk through the place, saw the well, which is lined with bricks to the depth of 60 feet, and supplies a lukewarm water, which is more insipid than that of the Nile, from which Nasr always has her own drinking water fetched. We then turned back, intending to start, but Nasr invited us to spend the night in Sorîba, as it was already too late to return to Wed Médineh by daylight. We accepted the invitation, and immediately a repast of cooked food was brought in, which was only a preparation for the magnificent supper. The Sultâna, however, did not allow herself to be seen again the whole evening. We remained in the hall, and slept on the same cool cushions which had served us during the day as a divan. The next morning, however, we were invited to visit her in her own rooms. She was more willing to talk to-day than yesterday, had European chairs placed for us, while her attendants and slave girls squatted down round us. We told her about her name-sister, the Sultâna Nasr of England, and exhibited her portrait to her on an English gold coin, which she regarded with much curiosity. Nevertheless, she showed very little desire to see with her own eyes that distant world beyond the northern ocean.

About eight o’clock we rode back to Wed Médineh. Soon after our arrival Seïd Haschim received a letter from Nasr, in which she asked him confidentially whether I would accept a little slave girl from her, as a gift to the stranger. I sent a message to inform her that this was contrary to our customs, but that there would be no difficulty if, instead of a slave girl, she would select a slave boy; and, after the removal of some scruples, as this seemed to her less becoming, she really sent a little slave boy, who was brought to me in our boat.

He had been the playmate of the Sultâna’s little grandson, the son of her daughter Dauer, and was handed over to me with the name of REHÂN (the Arabic designation for the sweet-scented basilicum). I was also informed that he was born in the district of Makâdi, on the frontier of Abyssinia, which generally furnishes the most intelligent and faithful slaves. This district is under Christian domination, and is inhabited both by Christians and Mohammedans, who are separated into different villages. The former call themselves Nazâra (Nazarenes), or Amhâra (Amharic Christians); the latter Giberta. Amongst the latter, children of their own race, or that of their neighbours, are frequently stolen and sold to Arabian slave-dealers; for in the central parts of Abyssinia the slave trade is strictly interdicted. However, this account of the boy has since proved incorrect, and perhaps was only meant to remove the obstacle which some might find in offering me a Christian boy, while on the other hand it would appear still more doubtful to hand over to me a native Mohammedan. The boy himself first communicated to our Christian cook, and afterwards to myself, that he was born of Christian parents, that he had here for the first time received the name of Rehân, and that his real name was Gabre Máriam, _i. e._ in Abyssinian, “the slave of Mary.” He was born near Gondar, the capital of Amhâra. He appears to have belonged to a family of some distinction, for the place called Bamba, which is stated by Bruce to be in the neighbourhood of Lake Tzana, by his accounts belonged to his grandfather; and his father, who now is dead, possessed many herds, which the boy often drove, with others, to the pasture. One day, above three or four years ago, when on such an expedition, at a considerable distance from his dwelling-place, he was stolen by some mounted Bedouins, carried off to the village of Waldakarel, and then sold to King Idris Adlân; by him he was afterwards presented to his sister Nasr. He is a pretty boy, very dark, and may be now between eight and nine years old; but much more advanced than a child of this age would be with us. The girls here marry from eight years old upwards. He wears his hair in a peculiar manner, in innumerable little braids; these must, at least once every month, be re-braided and daubed with grease, by a woman skilled in the art; and his body also must from time to time be well rubbed with grease. His entire clothing consists in a great white cloth, which he binds round his hips, and throws upwards over the shoulders. I call him now by his Christian name, and shall take him to Europe with me.

Seïd Haschim did all in his power to keep us some days longer in Wed Médineh. The first evening he invited us to his house, with the Turks of most distinction, and had a number of dancing-girls to show us the national dances in these parts; they chiefly consist in contortions of the upper part of the body and the arms, similar to what are represented on the Egyptian monuments; but differ from the Egyptian dances of the present day, which are chiefly limited to very ungraceful gestures.

A good-natured and very comical old man led on the dances, while he at the same time sang some Arabic songs, with a piercing but not disagreeable voice, which had reference to the assembled company, or to persons of repute, such as Nasr, Idris Adlân, Mak (_i. e._ Melek), Bâdi, &c.; and with his left hand touched the chords of a five-stringed lyre, passing the plectrum over them in time with his right. His instrument only embraced six tones of the octave. The first string on the right hand had the highest tone, C, to be struck with the thumb, the string immediately succeeding, the lowest tone, E; then followed the third, F; the fourth, A; the fifth, B. The instrument is called RABABA, and the performer on it REBÂBI. This man had been instructed by an old celebrated Rebâbi in Schendi; he had made his instrument himself, after the model of that belonging to his master, and had also acquired from him his talent for making verses, and thus became the favourite black bard of Wed Médineh. All the poetry of his songs had been composed by himself; they were sometimes improvised, and whoever disobliged him or his patrons, would probably be made the object of his satire.

I made him come to me the following morning, and, through Jussuf, write down four of his poems in Arabic: one on Mohammed, the son of Mak Mesâʾd, who resides in Metammeh; one upon King Nimr, who burnt Ismael Pascha, and is still living in Abyssinia; a third on Nasr; and lastly, a song of homage to pretty girls.[46] It is impossible to render these melodies in our notes. I have only written down a small portion of them, which in some measure approaches our mode of singing. They are generally half recited, half carried down, with quivering tones, from the highest notes to a deep and long-sustained tone. These are their most peculiar characteristics, but they are quite incapable of being noted down. Each verse contains four rhymes; the voice is retained lightly on each of them, on the second more than on the first and third; but longest on the last rhyme. The music always sinks at this point, and the same deep tone recurs, which gives a certain character to the progressing song. A particular recurrence of the melody may, indeed, also be noticed, but this is impossible for a European ear to remember. I purchased the instrument from the good-natured old man. He gave it unwillingly, although I let him name his own price; and several times after he had taken the money, and had laid down his instrument for it, an air of anxious sorrow came over his expressive countenance. The following day I bid him come to me again. He was depressed, and told me his wife had given him a sound beating for having given his instrument away. Here it is no disgrace for a man to be beaten by his wife, but it is so perhaps in the reverse case. A woman who has been beaten goes at once to the Cadi to complain; she then generally obtains justice, and the husband is punished.

In Wed Médineh we were also present at a funeral ceremony, which seemed a strange enough one to us. A woman had died three days before; the day succeeding her death, the third, the seventh, and several days afterwards are peculiarly solemnised. In front of the house, an hour before sunset, above a hundred women and children had collected, and more were constantly coming in, and cowered down beside the others. Two daughters of the deceased were present, whose richly ornamented and grease-besmeared heads they had already strewed with ashes, and had rubbed the whole of the upper part of their bodies white with them, so that their eyes and mouths alone shone forth clean, and, as it were, set into the white mask. The women wore long cloths round their hips; the young girls and children the Ráhat, a girdle composed of five strips of leather, hanging down close together; this is usually bound round the loins by a cord, prettily ornamented with shells and pearls, and it falls half-way down the leg. There was a great wooden bowl with ashes, which was repeatedly filled again with fresh ones. Female musicians cowered down close on either side of the door uttering shrill screams, which pierced our ears; they now clapped their hands together in time; now struck the sounding DARA-BUKA (a kind of hand kettle-drum, called here in the Sudan DALUKA); and now beat with sticks on some hollow gourds floating in tubs of water. The two daughters, about eighteen or twenty years of age, and the nearest relations, began, two and two, to move at first slowly towards the door in a narrow passage between the constantly increasing crowds; then suddenly shrill screams, clapping of hands, and loud shrieks burst from them all at once; whereupon they turned round, and began their fearfully contorted dancing. Bending the upper part of their body in convulsive and strained twistings and turnings, and slowly balancing themselves, they moved their feet forwards, then suddenly threw their breasts upwards with violence and their heads back on their shoulders, which they stretched out in all directions, and thus, with half-closed eyes, gradually glided forwards. In this manner they went down a slight incline of fifteen and twenty paces, where they threw themselves on the ground, covered themselves with dust and earth, and turned back again to re-commence the same dance. The younger of the two daughters had a beautiful slight figure, with wonderful elasticity, and when she stood quietly erect, or was lying on the ground with her sunken head, her regular and gentle, though inanimate features, even during the dance, and the classical form of her body, was exactly like an antique statue. This dancing procession was repeated over and over again. Each of the mourners is compelled at least to go through this once, and the nearer the relationship so much the more frequently is it repeated. Whoever cannot immediately force her way up to the vessel of ashes, takes them from the head of her neighbour to strew it on her own head. In front of this squatting assembly some women are cowering, who understand how to sob loudly and to shed profuse tears, which leave long black streaks on their white-rubbed cheeks. The most striking, and the most repelling, part of this spectacle is, that nothing is done from unrestrained sorrow, but all with deliberation, with a degree of pathos, and evidently studied; children as young as four and five years old are placed in the procession, and if they perform the difficult and unnatural movements well, their mothers, who are cowering behind, call out to them _taib, taib_—_i. e._ bravo! well done! In the second act, however, of this ceremony, rendered peculiarly stunning by its continual clapping, screaming, and shrieking, all the dancers throw themselves into the dust, and tumble down the hill; but this they also do slowly, and with deliberation, carefully drawing up their knees to their bodies, to hold their dresses with them, and also crossing their arms; they then roll down, over knees and back. This ceremony begins one hour before sunset, and lasts till night.

The unnatural feeling pervading the whole proceeding makes an indescribable impression, which is rendered still more disagreeable by seeing nothing in all of it but an inherited and perverted custom, an empty spectacle; not a trace of individual truth and natural sentiment can be perceived in the persons who participate; and yet the comparison between this and certain descriptions and representations of similar festivals among the ancients, teaches us to understand much, of which judging by our own manner of life, we can never form a correct notion, till we have once seen with our eyes such caricatures of metamorphoses as are here and there exhibited in the East.

The following day we visited the hospital, which we found very cleanly, and in good order; it holds a hundred patients, but there were then only eight-and-twenty within it. We then went to the barracks, in the large court-yard of which the men are exercised. The commanding officer ordered out the band of music, and they played several pieces before us. The first was the Parisienne, which sounded most strangely in this country, as well as the succeeding pieces, most of them French, and known to me; they were, however, tolerably well executed. The musicians performed almost solely on European instruments, and have also admitted the name of our trumpet into their Arabic musical language, but have transferred it to the drum, which they call _trumbêta_, while for the trumpet they have a peculiar name of their own, _nafir_; they call their great flute _sumára_, the small one _sufára_, and the great drum _tabli_. There were only twelve hundred soldiers present belonging to the regiment, which consists of four thousand men, almost all negroes, whose black faces staring out of their white linen uniform and red-tasselled caps, made them look like dressed-up monkeys, only much more unhappy and oppressed. The negroes are incapable of any military discipline and regular exertion, and generally sink beneath the imposed yoke. We did not, however, suspect that these same people would two days afterwards rebel in a body, and set off to their hills.

Emin Pascha was expected hourly. But on the 13th I received in the morning a letter from him, from Messelemîeh, between four and five hours distant from this place, in which he wrote that he should not come to Wed Médineh before the following day, and hoped to find us still there. He at the same time informed me that the war in Taka was over, and that all had submitted. Several hundred natives had been killed in skirmishes; the morning before the chief battle, all the Sheikhs of the tribes from Taka had come to the Pascha to sue for pardon, which he had granted them, on condition that no fugitive should venture to remain in the great wood, which was their chief place of refuge. The following morning he had the wood searched, and as nobody was discovered in it, he had it set on fire, and entirely burnt to the ground. On his journey back, he intends to pass through the eastern districts to Katârif, on the Abyssinian frontier, and thence to go to the Blue River. We had scarcely read this news from Taka, when we heard the sound of cannon in front of the barracks announcing the victorious message to the population round.

In another letter, which had gone to Emin Pascha instead of me, Herr von Wagner gave me the pleasing intelligence that our new companion, the painter Georgi, had arrived from Italy, and had already started for Dongola, where he waits for further orders. I shall write to him to come as far as Barkal to meet us.

As we were certain by this letter of finding the Pascha still in Messelemîeh, we started for that place about mid-day; and as the town is situated an hour and a half distant from the Nile, we made the journey by land.

The boat, meanwhile, was to follow us to the harbour of Messelemîeh, that is to say, to the nearest landing-place of this most important of the commercial towns of the whole Sudan. Besides Jussuf, we took with us the Kawass and Gabre Máriam, who sat behind me on the dromedary, where there is always left a small place for a servant, like a coach-box behind the carriage; he sits on the narrow hinder part of the animal, and holds on to the saddle with both his hands. It was hot, and the ground was parched up. The few birds which I saw were different from those which habitually inhabit the banks of the river.

Half-way we came to TÂIBA, a village which is only inhabited by FUKARA (plur. of FAKIR). These are the sages, the holy men of the people, a kind of priest, without however having priestly functions to perform; they can read and write; they do not permit any music, dancing, or festivals among them, and therefore have a great reputation for sanctity. The chief of this village is the greatest Fakir of the whole surrounding neighbourhood. Every one believes in him like a prophet; whatever he predicts, happens. The late Achmed Pascha, one month before his death, caused him to be imprisoned. “God will punish you for this,” was his answer to the order, and one month afterwards the Pascha died. He is a very rich man, and possesses several villages. We went in quest of him, and found him in his house at dinner; about twenty people were sitting round a colossal wooden bowl, which was filled with a gruel of boiled Durra and milk. The bowl was pushed in front of us, but we could not eat any of this food. We amused ourselves with the old Fakir, who joined in our conversation with easy, friendly, and pleasing manners, and then inquired our names, and the object of our journey. Every one who entered, our servants among the number, approached him reverently, and touched his hand with their mouth and forehead. The dignity of Sheikh is hereditary in his family; his son is looked up to almost as much as himself, and in this way we can understand how a village like this, when the Sheikh has once been himself a Fakir, can become altogether a priest-village. E’ Dâmer, on the island of Meröe, was formerly a Fakir place similar to this. The inhabitants of Tâiba, probably of Arabic race, call themselves ARAKIN. There are a number of such local names here, whose origin it is difficult to make out.

When we had smoked out our pipes, we left the congregation of holy men, and rode away. One half hour before we reached Messelemîeh, we came to a second village called Hellet e’ Solimân, where we dismounted at a house which had been built by the late Mak, or Melek Kambal, of Halfaï, when he married the daughter of Defalla, to whom the village belonged; it now belongs to his brother’s son, Mahmûd welled Schauîsch, who has besides the title of Melek, but is really only the guardian of Kambal’s little son, Melek Beshîr. It is easy to see what is now thought here of the old reverential title of Melek, or King. Mahmûd was not at home, as he had accompanied Ahmed Pascha on his campaign. Nevertheless, we were entertained in his house according to the hospitable custom of this country. Coverlets were spread out, milk and fresh baked Durra bread in thin slices, which has by no means a bad taste, was brought in; added to this, another simple, but refreshing beverage, _abréq_, fermented sourish Durra water. Soon after Asser we reached Messelemîeh. Emin Pascha received us very kindly, and communicated to us the intelligence that Mohammed Ali’s first minister, Boghos Bey, whom I had visited in Alexandria, was dead, and that Artim Bey, a man of elegant manners, and a shrewd politician, had been appointed in his place.

We declined the Pascha’s invitation to supper, and offer of a night’s lodging, and soon rode away towards the river, where we hoped to find our boat. As it had not yet arrived, we spent the night on anqarebs in the open air. We were not able to start for Kamlîn till the following morning, the 15th March, and reached it towards evening. The next day we spent agreeably with our countryman, Herr Bauer. On the 17th, having paid a visit to Nureddin Effendi, in Wad Eraue, several hours distant from Kamlîn, we arrived on the following day at SOBA, where I immediately sent for one of the vases which had been found in the ruins of the ancient city, and which was said to be kept by the brother of the Sheikh. After waiting a long time, it was brought to us. It was an ancient vessel for incense, made of bronze in filigree work. The sides of the vessel, which was of a roundish form, and about nine inches high, and of similar width, consisted solely of open-work Arabesques; the swinging chains had been fastened to the upper border by three little hooks, one of which, however, has broken away, so that the most interesting part of the whole, an inscription running round beneath the border, and like the Arabesques carved _à jour_, in rather large letters, thereby is unfortunately incomplete. This is of peculiar importance, as the writing is again in the Greek, or rather in the Coptic character, as on the stone-tablet; but the language is neither of these, but doubtless the ancient vernacular tongue of Soba, the capital of the mighty Kingdom of Alŏa. Short as it is, it is distinguished from the stone inscription by containing the Coptic signs ϣ (sch) and ϯ (ti), which are not to be found in the latter. I purchased the vessel for a few piastres. This is now the third monument of Soba which we take away with us, for I must mention, in addition, that at the house of Seïd Haschim, in Wed Médineh, we also saw a small Venus of Greek workmanship, carved in pure style, and about a foot high, which had likewise been found in Soba, and was presented to me by its owner. At length, on the 19th March, we again entered the house of Herr Hermanovich, in Chartûm, later than our original calculations had led us to expect, for which reason I had already communicated our delay to Erbkam, in a letter from Wed Médineh.