"Happily we shall not meet on the river with any vessel employed in the slave trade. Baker is at this moment at Gondokoro with his river police. His is a noble task, but it will not have the results anticipated from it, so long as he does not exercise the same amount of surveillance over the land routes that he does on the Nile. The Governor of Kordofan, I am told, has in this present year allowed more than five hundred slave-dealers to pass through his territory. The majority of these moudirs are slave-dealers themselves, and so far from hindering the traffic, against which Baker is protesting so energetically, they encourage and protect it.
"In the fore-part of the vessel, a sort of horse-box has been constructed for our horses, and in the after part, a partition separates us from the servants and crew, and furnishes us with a cabin, itself divided again into two compartments, one for Madame de Guéran and Miss Poles, and the other for us. These vessels, constructed for the navigation of the Upper Nile, are called negghers. The one we have chartered has been sent to us from Khartoum, and in all probability we shall retain it for the remainder of our journey along the river, that is, if we shape our course towards Gondokoro. It has only one mast, about twenty feet high, with an enormous yard and a lateen sail.
"We have set sail! The north wind, which prevails here throughout the greater part of the year, is in our favour, and we take advantage of its good-will to embark.
"Very soon we make out, on the left bank, El-Obisch, about two kilometres from the river, on the right bank, Kennour, and, some hours afterwards, our attention was called to the mouth of an important river, the Atbara, which rises on the confines of Abyssinia.
"The breadth of the Nile is imposing in the extreme; enormous forests stretch out into the distance on the one hand, and on the other may be seen, beyond the vast plains or savannahs which border on the stream, the desert of Bahiouda. At sunset this desert, lying on the western side, has the appearance of being enveloped in a vast conflagration, which is reflected on the tops of the lofty trees on the eastern bank. Our vessel glides slowly on, and seems to be complacently regarding itself in the calm, clear water, whilst large flocks of goats and sheep, and herds of oxen and camels wend their way to quench their thirst in the stream.
"And now the scene changes, the trees give place to plants; clumps of calotropis, bushes of acacia, thickets of salvadora, plantations of durra. Turtle doves, white-throated swifts, widow-birds in their sombre dress of velvety black with yellow epaulettes, and Numidian cranes flit to and fro in this ocean of verdure.
"To-day we disembarked, after having ordered the captain to sail on and pick us up at Chendi. We wanted to ride a few miles by way of varying our pleasure.
"A gallop of two hours brought us to the ancient town of Meröe, remarkable for its handsome ruins and its pyramids. Meröe, some thousands of years ago was, as you no doubt know, the capital of a flourishing kingdom, renowned for its commerce, its sacred college and its monuments. In this country, despised in our day, a gigantic past springs up every now and then from the ground beneath your feet!
"At sunset we had to seek a halting-place, and this was offered to us by the Djaalin Arabs, who placed two very comfortable tents at our disposal. Just as, after a somewhat light supper, we were going to retire to our sleeping apartments, a peculiar odour, for which none of us could account, suddenly reached our olfactory organs. Our interpreter, Ali, who had accompanied us, was despatched for information, and without any loss of time he edified us by a description of a very curious custom. The women of this country, in order To render themselves as pleasing as possible to their husbands, and to replace those charms of which time may have robbed them, have conceived the idea of attraction by means of perfumes, with which they impregnate themselves to such an extent that the odour appears natural to them. To arrive at this result, they dig a ditch, fill it with live charcoal, throw in fragrant plants and sweet-smelling wood, and, then, covered from head to foot in a huge sheet, they seat themselves over the ditch, and thus take an aromatic bath. Their husbands, deeply sensible of this delicate attention, forget in the power of their perfume, their weakness in the matter of beauty.
"'I suppose,' remarked Périères, 'that in this country a man would never say that his better half was pretty. He would dilate his nostrils, take a voluptuous sniff and exclaim, 'How nice my wife does smell!'