A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar Part 6

This overflowing of the Nile was occasioned by the rise of the Bahar el Abiud, which, this year at least, commenced its annual augmentation nearly a month sooner than the Nile.]

[Footnote 47: The troops of Shouus and the Abbadies swam their horses and dromedaries over the river. Cogia Achmet, one of the chiefs of the army, in endeavoring to imitate the cavalry of s.h.a.geia, lost seventy horses and some soldiers. The rest of the horses and camels of the army were taken over by arranging them by the sides of the boats, with their halters held in hand by the people in the boats. Another large portion of our horses and camels was taken over by the s.h.a.geias and the Abbadies, who fastened at the breast of each horse, and over the neck of each camel of ours, so carried over, an empty water-skin blown up with air, which prevented the animal from sinking, while their guides swam by their sides, and so conducted them over.]

[Footnote 48: The same day that the camp marched from the Bahar el Abiud, Mr. Caillaud and Mr. Frediani embarked in the boats to go to Sennaar, by the river, in order to have an opportunity of visiting the ruins of "Soba," which lie on the east side of the Nile, not far above from its junction with the Bahar el Abiud. When these gentlemen rejoined us at Sennaar, they informed me that almost the very ruins of this city have perished; they found, however, there some fragments of a temple, and of some granite, statues of lions: the city itself, they said, had been built of brick. This city of "Soba" probably takes its name from "Saba," the son of Cush, who first colonized this country, which is called, in the Hebrew Bible, "the land of Cush and Saba."--See Gen. x.

7. See the references in a Concordance to the Hebrew Bible, under the heads of "Cush," and "Saba."

If there were any pyramids near Saba, I should believe it to be the ancient Meroe, because Josephus represents that the ancient name of Meroe was "Saba." "Nam Saba urbs eadem fuisse perhibetur quae a Cambyse Meroe in uxoris honorem dicta est:" quoted from Eichom's ed. of Sim.

Heb. Lex. artic. Sameh Bet Alef

It was impossible for me to ask of the Pasha liberty to accompany the gentlemen abovementioned, as a battle was expected in a few days between us and the king of Sennaar, from which I would not have been absent on any consideration.]

[Footnote 49: The people of Dongola, s.h.a.geia, Berber, Shendi, and Sennaar, do not use mills to make meal. They reduce grain to meal by rubbing it a handful at a time between two stones--one fixed in the ground, and one held by the hands. By long and tedious friction, the grain is reduced to powder. This labor is performed by the women, as is almost all the drudgery of the people of the Upper Nile.]

[Footnote 50: On my return from Sennaar, I descended by the river as far as Berber. On the way I did see some few water-wheels, which, however, were employed merely to water the patches of ground devoted to raising vegetables.]

[Footnote 51: The Pasha had invited the Malek of Shendi and the Malek of Halfya to accompany him to Sennaar. The Malek of Halfya excused himself on account of his age and infirmities, but sent his eldest son along with the Pasha. By this stroke of policy the Pasha made the tranquility of the powerful provinces of Shendi and Halfya certain; and the advance of his army without risk from an insurrection in his rear; as the people of those provinces would hardly dare to make any hostile movement while the chief of one province and the heir of the Malek of the other were in our camp. Nymmer, the Malek of Shendi, is a grave and venerable man of about 65 years of age, very dignified in his deportment, and highly respectable for his morals. The Malek of Halfya I have not seen.]

[Footnote 52: The present Sultan of Sennaar is a young man of about 26 years of age; he is black, his mother having been a Egress. He was taken out of prison, where he had been confined for eighteen years by his predecessor, who was ma.s.sacred by the party who placed him upon the throne. This revolution had taken place not very long before our march to Sennaar. His name is Bady.]

[Footnote 53: The natives told me that this palace had been built eighteen years ago, by the late good Sultan that they had had, who had planted before it rows of trees, which had been destroyed when the palace was ruined, as I understood them, in the wars between the different compet.i.tors for the throne during the last eighteen years.]

[Footnote 54: The river Nile lost its transparency four days before the army reached Sennaar. The day that presents the river troubled, marks the commencement of its augmentation. The day before we observed this change in the Nile, its waters were very clear and transparent. The day after, they were brown with mud.]

[Footnote 55: Sennaar has three market-places. On our arrival we found them deserted, but on a.s.surances from the Pasha that all sellers should receive a fair price for their commodities, the princ.i.p.al one in a few days began to be filled. The articles I saw there during my stay in Sennaar, were as follows: Meat of camels, kine, sheep, and goats; a few cat-fish from the river, plenty of a vegetable called meholakea; some limes, a few melons, cuc.u.mbers, dried barmea, a vegetable common in Egypt; beans, durra, duchan, tobacco of the country, plenty of gum arable, with which, by the way, Sennaar abounds, (the natives use it in their cookery;) drugs and spices brought from Gidda, among which I observed ginger, pepper, and cloves; and great quant.i.ties of dried odoriferous herbs found in Sennaar, with which the natives season their dishes; to which must be added, aplenty of the long cotton cloths used for dress in Sennaar. Such were the articles offered for sale by the people of the country. In addition to which, the suttlers of our army offered for sale, tobacco, coffee, rice, sugar, shirts, drawers, shoes, gun flints, &c. &c. all at a price three or four times greater than they could be bought for at Cairo. In some parts of the market-place the Turks established coffee-houses, and the Greeks who accompanied the army, cook-shops. These places became the resort of every body who wanted to buy something to eat, or to hear the news of the day. There might be seen soldiers in their shirts and drawers, hawking about their breeches for sale in order to be able to buy a joint of meat to relish their rations of durra withal, and cursing bitterly their luck in that they had not received any pay for eight months; while the solemn Turk of rank perambulated the area, involved, like pious Eneas at Carthage, in a veil of clouds exhaling from a long amber headed pipe. All around you you might hear much hard swearing in favor of the most palpable lies; the seller in favor of his goods, and the buyer in favor of his Egyptian piasters. In one place a crowd collects around somebody or other lying on the ground without his head on, on account of some misdemeanor; a little farther on, thirty or forty soldiers are engaged in driving, with repeated strokes of heavy mallets, sharp pointed pieces of timber, six or eight inches square, up the posteriors of some luckless insurgents who had had the audacity to endeavor to defend their country and their liberty; the women of the country meantime standing at a distance, and exclaiming, "that it was scandalous to make men die in so indecent a manner, and protesting that such a death was only fit for a Christian,"

(a character they hold in great abhorrence, probably from never having seen one). Such was the singular scene presented to the view by the market-place of Sennaar.]

[Footnote 56: The occasion of this expedition was as follows:--On our arrival at Sennaar, and after the accord made between the Pasha and the Sultan of Sennaar, by which the latter surrendered his kingdom to the disposal of the Vizier of the Grand Seignor, the Pasha sent circulars throughout all the districts of the kingdom notifying the chiefs of this act, and summoning them to come in to him and render their homage. The Chief of the Mountaineers, inhabiting the mountains south and south-west of Sennaar (the capital), not only refused to acknowledge the Pasha, but even to receive his letter. On this, the Pasha sent Cogia Achmet, one of the roughest of his chiefs, with thirteen hundred cavalry, escorting three, brazen-faced lawyers, out of the ten the Pasha had brought with him in order to talk with the people of the upper country, to bring this man and his followers to reason.]

[Footnote 57: Several of the chiefs of Eastern Sennaar had refused to recognize the act of the Sultan, calling him "a coward" and "a traitor,"

for surrendering their country to a stranger. Some of them took up arms, which occasioned the expedition commanded by the Divan Effendi.]

[Footnote 58: I must confess that I was much shocked and disgusted by this act on the part of the Pasha, especially as he had shown so many traits of humanity in the lower country, which was undoubtedly one of the princ.i.p.al causes of its prompt submission. This execution was excused in the camp, by saying, that it would strike such terror as would repress all attempts at insurrection, and would consequently prevent the effusion of much blood. It may have been consistent with the principles of military policy, but I feel an insurmountable reluctance to believe it.]

[Footnote 59: They told me the names of these rivers, which I put down upon a sheet of paper devoted to preserving the names of some of the princ.i.p.al Maleks of the country. In my journey back this paper has disappeared from among my notes and papers, which has been a subject of great vexation to me.]

[Footnote 60: The people of Sennaar also believed that our boats could not pa.s.s the third cataract; and, therefore, their opinion with regard to the sh.e.l.lal at Sulluk is not to be relied on.]

[Footnote 61: The rainy season in Sennaar, at least the commencement of it, such as I found it, may be thus described: Furious squalls of wind in the course of one or two hours, coming from all points of the compa.s.s, bringing and heaping together black clouds charged with electric matter; for twelve or fifteen hours an almost continual roar of thunder, and, at intervals, torrents of rain; after which, the sky would be clear for two, three, or four days at a time.]

[Footnote 62: It is nevertheless possible that this fly may be found in that part of the kingdom of Sennaar which lies on the other side of the Adit.]

[Footnote 63: It was in the house where I quartered, at Sennaar, that I saw this singular animal. I jogged Khalil Aga, my countryman and companion, to look at it. He burst cut into an exclamation, "by G.o.d, that snake has got legs." He jumped up and seized a stick in order to kill and keep it as a curiosity, but it dodged his blow, and darted away among the baggage, which was overhauled without finding it, as it had undoubtedly escaped into some hole in the clay wall of the house. Mr.

Constant, the gentleman, who accompanies Mr. Caillaud, was present at the time, so that I am convinced that what I saw was not an ocular delusion. I have been informed, since my return to Egypt, that the figure of this animal is to be seen sculptured upon the ancient monuments of Egypt.]

[Footnote 64: The people of Sennaar catch, cook and eat, without scruple, cats, rats and mice; and those who are rich enough to buy a wild hog, fatten it up and make a feast of it. I had heard in the lower country that the people of Sennaar made no scruple to eat swine's flesh, but I absolutely refused to believe that a people calling themselves Mussulmans could do this from choice. But after my arrival in Sennaar I was obliged to own that I had been mistaken. The species of hog found in the kingdom of Sennaar is small and black; it is not found in that part of the kingdom called "El Gezira," i.e. the island, but is caught in the woody mountains of the country near Abyssinia. In the house of one Malek in Sennaar was found about a dozen of these animals fattening for his table.]

[Footnote 65: The mountains of Bokki border upon the kingdom of Fezoueli, which lies south of Sennaar twenty days march. The mountains of Fezoueli are supposed to contain gold mines; pieces of gold are frequently found in the torrents that flow from those mountains in the rainy season. A native of that country told the Pasha Ismael, that he had seen a piece of gold, found in those mountains, as big as the bottom part of the silver narguil of his Excellence, i.e. about six inches in diameter. That there is gold in that country, is certain, as the female prisoners, taken at Bokki, had many gold rings and bracelets, of which they were quickly disenc.u.mbered by our soldiers. The Pasha intends to visit Fezoueli after the rainy season is over, to find the veins from whence this gold is washed down by the torrents, and, in case of success, to work the mines.]

[Footnote 66: We pa.s.sed Attar Baal the same night. The reader is aware that a boat carrying a courier, could not be detained to give a pa.s.senger an opportunity to see ruins.]

[Footnote 67: The "Adit," or Nile of Bruce, enters the Bahar el Abiud nearly at right angles, but such is the ma.s.s of the latter river, that the Nile cannot mingle its waters with those of the Bahar el Abiud for many miles below their junction. The waters of the Adit are almost black during the season of its augmentation; those of the Bahar el Abiud, on the contrary, are white: so that for several miles below their junction, the eastern part of the river is black, and the western is white. This white color of the Bahar el Abiud is occasioned by a very fine white clay with which its waters are impregnated. At the point of junction between the Bahar el Abiud and the Adit, the Bahar el Abiud is almost barred across by an island and a reef of rocks; this barrier checks its current, otherwise it would probably almost arrest the current of the Adit. It is, nevertheless, sufficiently strong to prevent the Adit from mingling with it immediately, although the current of the Adit is very strong, and enters the Bahar el Abiud nearly at right angles.]

[Footnote 68: Since my return to Egypt, we have learned that this army, after some b.l.o.o.d.y battles, had succeeded in taking possession of Darfour and Kordofan.]

[Footnote 69: The provinces lying on the third Cataract, between s.h.a.geia and Berber, are called, 1st, Monasier; 2d, Isyout, 3d, El Raba Tab.]

[Footnote 70: He came up in one of the nine boats that were able to pa.s.s, as mentioned before.]

[Footnote 71: As the people of these countries dislike the piasters of Egypt, I bought a quant.i.ty of soap at Sennaar from the Greeks who accompanied the army as sutlers, in order to serve as a medium of exchange; for in most of the provinces on the Upper Nile, they prefer soap to any thing you can offer, except dollars, or the gold coin of Constantinople.]

[Footnote 72: Khalil Aga, a native of New York, took the turban a few weeks before the departure of Ismael Pasha from Cairo. Learning that I was to accompany his Excellence, he requested me to obtain of the Pasha that he might be attached to me during the expedition. He is probably the first individual that ever traversed the whole of the river Nile from Rosetti to Sennaar. I have done the same, except about two hundred miles of the third cataract.]

[Footnote 73: This I suppose to be the point where terminates the singular bend in the river noticed in the former part of my journal.]

[Footnote 74: The wind, during the day, was constantly from the north, which was the general direction of our march from the time we quitted the river till we reached it again, so that we had the breezes always in our faces. The air of the desert is so very dry that no part of my body was moistened by perspiration except the top of my head, which was sheltered from the influence of the sun and air by the folds of my turban. I did not feel incommoded by heat in the desert when out of the sun's rays, but on arriving at a.s.suan I found it almost intolerable.]

[Footnote 75: The names of the wells in the desert of Omgourann, between Berber and Seboo, are as follows:--1st, Apseach. 2d, Morat. 3d, El Medina. 4th, Amrashee, 5th, Mogareen. In the two latter, water is only found after heavy rains.]

[Footnote 76: Close by this rock was the skull of some wretched man who had perished on this spot. All along our route we saw hundreds of skeletons of camels. The skull that we saw probably belonged to one of two Mogrebin soldiers who deserted at Berber, in order to return to.

Egypt, and who both perished with thirst in the desert.]

[Footnote 77: Our guide, an Abadie, would not permit the camels of our caravan to be watered at the well of Apseach, saying, that if he did, all the water then in the well would be consumed, and the consequence would be, that the nest traveler that came might perish with thirst.]

[Footnote 78: The ground near the well of Morat is full of scorpion holes. On my arrival at midnight I spread my carpet on the ground and slept soundly. In the morning when it was taken up, we found under it a scorpion, I am sure four inches in length, its color green and yellow.

I was told that they abound near all the wells of the desert, and I have seen very many at different places on the borders of the river.]

[Footnote 79: Which we found to be the case till we came within fifteen hours march of the Nile.]

[Footnote 80: Out of the twenty-two camels that we had commenced our march with from Berber, only twelve reached the river.]

[Footnote 81: This was occasioned by the heat of the sun and the dryness of the air of the desert, which made nearly two fifths of our water to evaporate.]

[Footnote 82: Before we entered the desert our caravan had been joined by several runaway domestics, who had fled from the army to return to Egypt.]

[Footnote 83: The soldier of the Cadilaskier before mentioned, who was the conductor, i.e. the chief of the caravan, had recourse to a singular expedient to rouse one of them whom the whip could not stir. He seized his purse of money, which this man carried in his bosom, swearing that if he chose to stop and die there he might, and that he would be his heir and inherit his purse. This testamentary disposition on the part of the soldier had a wonderful effect. The man got up from the sand and walked forward very briskly, calling upon the soldier to restore the purse, as he was determined not to lie down any more till he reached the river. The soldier, however, observing the effect of his proceeding, retained the purse till we arrived at the river, when he restored it.]

[Footnote 84: The last time I saw him was when I gave him part of the last bowl; he kissed my slipper, shedding abundance of tears, and saying that I was the only one of the caravan that had shown him mercy. I bade him keep up a good heart, for that on the morrow morning, by the blessing of G.o.d, we should be at the river.]

[Footnote 85: Directly opposite Seboo, on the other bank of the river, stands an ancient Egyptian temple. Seboo is four days march of a camel above a.s.suan.]

[Footnote 86: The reason for their refusal I afterwards learned, was, that they believed that the lad was already dead, and that therefore they should miss the reward promised.]

[Footnote 87: Three days after my arrival at a.s.suan I had news of the fate of this lad, from a Nubian voyager of the desert, on his way to a.s.suan, who had found him, thirty-six hours after our arrival at Seboo, lying in the ravine leading to the river, but almost dead. He had stopped, it seems, to sleep a few hours, believing that sleep would refresh him, and that he could do it without danger, as the river was not many hours off. On his awaking, he found himself so weak that it was with great difficulty that he reached the ravine, where he fell. The traveler gave him water, and placed him on his dromedary, and brought him to the river, but he was too far gone; he died in a half an hour after he reached it. The last words he spoke, this man told me, related to his G.o.d, his prophet, and his mother: this traveler dug his grave and buried him. I told this man that I had offered a reward at Seboo to whoever would bring this unfortunate young man to the river, and that I would give the money to him as a recompense for having done all he could do in such a case. The man, to my astonishment, replied, "that it was not money that he would take as a reward for what he had done; that he would receive no reward for it but from the hands of G.o.d, who would pay more for it than I could." I told him that I was happy to have found a Mussulman mindful of the precepts of the Koran, which inculcate charity and benevolence to all those who are in distress, and that the record of such deeds would occupy a great s.p.a.ce on the almost blank page of our good actions.]