Chapter XXI (2)

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: SEEBEHR’S COURT.]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: IBRAHIM EFFENDI.]

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

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

[Sidenote: DAR FERTEET.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: THE KREDY.]

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

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

[Sidenote: A PROJECT ABANDONED.]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: ROUTE TO DARFOOR.]

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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