The Wells of Mûrr-hàt.
We found at the wells Capt. Peel’s Syrian friend, Churi, who was on his way to Korosko with five camels, carrying the Captain’s baggage. He left immediately after my arrival, or I might have sent by him a Christmas greeting to friends at home. During the afternoon three slave-merchants arrived, in four days from Abou-Hammed. Their caravan of a hundred and fifty slaves was on the way. They were tall, strong, handsome men, dark-brown in complexion, but with regular features. They were greatly pleased with my sketch-book, but retreated hastily when I proposed making a drawing of them. I then called Eyoub into my tent, who willingly enough sat for the rough sketch which heads this chapter. Achmet did his best to give me a good Christmas dinner, but the pigeons were all gone, and the few fowls which remained were so spiritless from the heat and jolting of the camel, that their slaughter anticipated their natural death by a very short time. Nevertheless, I produced a cheery illumination by the tent-lanterns, and made Eyoub and the Bishàrees happy with a bottle of arakee and some handfulls of tobacco. The wind whistled drearily around my tent, but I glowed like fire from the oozing out of the heat I had absorbed, and the Arabs without, squatted around their fire of camel’s dung, sang the wild, monotonous songs of the Desert.
We left Mûrr-hàt at sunrise, on the morning of the sixth day. I walked ahead, through the foldings of the black mountains, singing as I went, from the inspiration of the brilliant sky and the pure air. In an hour and a half the pass opened on a broad plain of sand, and I waited for my caravan, as the day was growing hot. On either side, as we continued our journey, the blue lakes of the mirage glittered in the sun. Several isolated pyramids rose above the horizon, far to the East, and a purple mountain-range in front, apparently two or three hours distant, stretched from east to west. “We will breakfast in the shade of those mountains,” I said to Achmet, but breakfast-time came and they seemed no nearer, so I sat down in the sand and made my meal. Towards noon we met large caravans of camels, coming from Berber. Some were laden with gum, but the greater part were without burdens, as they were to be sold in Egypt. In the course of the day upwards of a thousand passed us. Among the persons we met was Capt. Peel’s cawass, or janissary (whom he had left in Khartoum), on his return, with five camels and three slaves, which he had purchased on speculation. He gave such a dismal account of Soudân, that Achmet was quite gloomy for the rest of the day.
The afternoon was intensely hot, the thermometer standing at 100°, but I felt little annoyance from the heat, and used no protection against it. The sand was deep and the road a weary one for the camels, but the mountains which seemed so near at hand in the morning were not yet reached. We pushed forward; the sun went down, and the twilight was over before we encamped at their base. The tent was pitched by the light of the crescent moon, which hung over a pitchy-black peak. I had dinner at the fashionable hour of seven. Achmet was obliged to make soup of the water of Mûrr-hàt, which had an abominable taste. I was so drowsy that before my pipe was finished, I tumbled upon my mattress, and was unconscious until midnight, when I awoke with the sensation of swimming in a river of lava. Eyoub called the mountain Kab el Kafass—an absurd name, without meaning—but I suspect it is the same ridge which crosses the caravan route from Shendy to Assouan, and which is called Djebel Shigre by Bruce and Burckhardt.
The tent was struck in the morning starlight, at which time the thermometer stood at 55°. I walked alone through the mountains, which rose in conical peaks to the height of near a thousand feet. The path was rough and stony until I reached the outlet of the pass. When the caravan came up, I found that the post-courier who left Korosko two days after us, had joined it. He was a jet-black, bare-headed and barelegged Bishàree, mounted on a dromedary. He remained with us all day, and liked our company so well that he encamped with us, in preference to continuing his journey. On leaving the mountain, we entered a plain of coarse gravel, abounding with pebbles of agate and jasper. Another range, which Eyoub called Djebel Dighlee, appeared in front, and we reached it about noon. The day was again hot, the mercury rising to 95°. It took us nearly an hour to pass Djebel Dighlee, beyond which the plain stretched away to the Nile, interrupted here and there by a distant peak. Far in advance of us lay Djebel Mokràt, the limit of the next day’s journey. From its top, said Eyoub, one may see the palm-groves along the Nile. We encamped on the open plain, not far from two black pyramidal hills, in the flush of a superb sunset. The ground was traversed by broad strata of gray granite, which lay on the surface in huge boulders. Our camels here found a few bunches of dry, yellow grass, which had pierced the gravelly soil. To the south-east was a mountain called by the Arabs Djebel Nogàra (the Mountain of the Drum), because, as Eyoub declared, a devil who had his residence among its rocks, frequently beat a drum at night, to scare the passing caravans.
The stars were sparkling freshly and clearly when I rose, on the morning of the eighth day, and Djebel Mokràt lay like a faint shadow on the southern horizon. The sun revealed a few isolated peaks to the right and left, but merely distant isles on the vast, smooth ocean of the Desert. It was a rapture to breathe air of such transcendent purity and sweetness. I breakfasted on the immense floor, sitting in the sun, and then jogged on all day, in a heat of 90°, towards Djebel Mokràt, which seemed as far off as ever. The sun went down, and it was still ahead of us. “That is a Djebel Shaytan,” I said to Eyoub; “or rather, it is no mountain; it is an afrite.” “O Effendi!” said the old man, “don’t speak of afrites here. There are many in this part of the Desert, and if a man travels alone here at night, one of them walks behind him and forces him to go forward and forward, until he has lost his path.” We rode on by the light of the moon and stars—silently at first, but presently Shekh Ali began to sing his favorite song of “Yallah salaàmeh, el-hamdu lillàh fôk belàmeh,” and one of the Kenoos, to beguile the way, recited in a chanting tone, copious passages from the Koran. Among other things, he related the history of Joseph, which Achmet translated to me. The whole story would be too long to repeat, but portions of it are interesting.
“After Joseph had been thrown into the well,” continued the Kenoos, “a caravan of Arabs came along, and began to draw water for the camels, when one of the men said: ‘O Shekh, there is something in the well.’ ‘Well,’ said the Shekh, ‘if it be a man, he belongs to me, but if it be goods, you may have them.’ So they drew it up, and it was Joseph, and the Shekh took him to Cairo and sold him to Azeez (Potiphar).’ [I omit his account of Potiphar’s wife, which could not well be repeated.] When Joseph was in prison, he told what was the meaning of the dreams of Sultan Faraoon’s baker and butler, who were imprisoned with him. The Sultan himself soon afterwards had a dream about seven fat cows eating seven lean ones, which nobody could explain. Then the jailer went to Faraoon, and said: ‘Here is Joseph, in jail—he can tell you all about it.’ Faraoon said: ‘Bring him here, then.’ So they put Joseph in a bath, washed him, shaved his head, gave him a new white turban, and took him to the Sultan, who said to him: ‘Can you explain my dream?’ ‘To be sure I can,’ said Joseph, ‘but if I tell you, you must make me keeper of your magazines.’ ‘Very well:’ said Faraoon. Then Joseph told how the seven fat cows meant seven years when the Nile would have two inundations a year, and the seven lean cows, seven years afterwards when it would have no inundation at all; and he said to Faraoon that since he was now magazine-keeper, he should take from all the country as far as Assouan, during the seven fat years, enough wheat and dourra and beans, to last during the seven lean ones.” The narrator might have added that the breed of fat kine has never been restored, all the cattle of Egypt being undoubted descendants of the lean stock.
Two hours after sunset, we killed Djebel Mokràt, as the Arabs say: that is, turned its corner. The weary camels were let loose among some clumps of dry, rustling reeds, and I stretched myself out on the sand, after twelve hours in the saddle. Our water was nearly exhausted by this time, and the provisions were reduced to hermits’ fare—bread, rice and dates. I had, however, the spice of a savage appetite, which was no sooner appeased, than I fell into a profound sleep. I could not but admire the indomitable pluck of the little donkeys owned by the Kenoos. These animals not only carried provisions and water for themselves and their masters, the whole distance, but the latter rode them the greater part of the way; yet they kept up with the camels, plying their little legs as ambitiously the last day as the first. I doubt whether a horse would have accomplished as much under similar circumstances.
The next morning we started joyfully, in hope of seeing the Nile, and even Eyoub, for the first time since leaving Korosko, helped to load the camels. In an hour we passed the mountain of Mokràt, but the same endless plain of yellow gravel extended before us to the horizon. Eyoub had promised that we should reach Abou-Hammed in half a day, and even pointed out some distant blue mountains in the south, as being beyond the Nile. Nevertheless, we travelled nearly till noon without any change of scenery, and no more appearance of river than the abundant streams of the mirage, on all sides. I drank my last cup of water for breakfast, and then continued my march in the burning sun, with rather dismal spirits. Finally, the Desert, which had been rising since we left the mountain, began to descend, and I saw something like round granite boulders lying on the edge of the horizon. “Effendi, see the doum-trees!” cried Eyoub. I looked again: they were doum-palms, and so broad and green that they must certainly stand near water. Soon we descended into a hollow in the plain, looking down which I saw to the south a thick grove of trees, and over their tops the shining surface of the Nile. “Ali,” I called to my sailor-servant, “look at that great bahr shaytan!” The son of the Nile, who had never before, in all his life, been more than a day out of sight of its current, was almost beside himself with joy. “Wallah, master,” he cried, “that is no river of the Devil: it is the real Nile—the water of Paradise.” It did my heart good to see his extravagant delight. “If you were to give me five piastres, master,” said he, “I would not drink the bitter water of Mûrr-hàt.” The guide made me a salutation, in his dry way, and the two Nubians greeted me with “a great welcome to you, O, Effendi!” With every step the valley unfolded before me—such rich deeps of fan-like foliage, such a glory in the green of the beans and lupins, such radiance beyond description in the dance of the sunbeams on the water! The landscape was balm to my burning eyes, and the mere sight of the glorious green herbage was a sensuous delight, in which I rioted for the rest of the day.