A journey to Central Africa

by Bayard Taylor

There was one of our rides which I never call to mind without a leap of the heart. The noble red stallion which I usually mounted had not forgotten the plains of Dar-Fūr, where he was bred, and whenever we came upon the boundless level extending southward from the town, his wild blood was aroused. He pricked up his ears, neighed as grandly as the war-horse of Job, champed furiously against the restraining bit, and ever and anon cast a glance of his large, brilliant eye backward at me, half in wonder, half in scorn, that I did not feel the same desire. The truth is, I was tingling from head to foot with equal excitement, but Dr. Reitz was a thorough Englishman in his passion for trotting, and was vexed whenever I rode at any other pace. Once, however, the sky was so blue, the morning air so cool and fresh, and the blood so lively in my veins, that I answered the fierce questioning of Sultan’s eye with an involuntary shout, pressed my knees against his sides and gave him the rein. O Mercury, what a rush followed! We cut the air like the whizzing shaft from a Saracen cross-bow; Sultan stretched out until his powerful neck was almost on a level with his back, and the glorious rhythm of his hoofs was accompanied by so little sense of effort, that it seemed but the throbbing of his heart, keeping time with my own. His course was as straight as a sunbeam, swerving not a hair’s-breadth to the right or left, but forward, forward into the freedom of the Desert. Neck and neck with him careered the Consul’s milk-white stallion, and I was so lost in the divine excitement of our speed, that an hour had passed before I was cool enough to notice where we were going. The Consul finally called out to me to stop, and I complied, sharing the savage resistance of Sultan, who neighed and plunged with greater ardor than at the start. The minarets of Khartoum had long since disappeared; we were in the centre of a desolate, sandy plain, broken here and there by clumps of stunted mimosas—a dreary landscape, but glorified by the sunshine and the delicious air. We rode several miles on the return track, before we met the pursuing attendants, who had urged their dromedaries into a gallop, and were sailing after us like a flock of ostriches.

A few days after my arrival, we had the dromedaries saddled and rode to Kereff, a village on the Blue Nile, about two leagues distant. The path was over a wide plain, covered with dry grass, and resembling an Illinois prairie after a long drought. In the rainy season it is green and luxuriant with grass and a multitude of flowers. The only trees were the savage white thorn of the Desert, until we approached the river, where we found forests of the large euphorbia, which I had first noticed as a shrub in Upper Egypt. It here became a tree, upwards of twenty feet in height. The branches bent over my head, as I rode through on the Consul’s tallest dromedary. The trees were all in blossom, and gave out a subtle, sickening odor. The flowers appear in whorls around the stem, at the base of the leaves; the corolla is entire, but divided into five points, white in the centre, with a purple stain at the extremity. The juice of this plant is viscid and milky, and the Arabs informed me that if a single drop of it gets into the eye it will produce instant blindness.

Beyond these thickets extended patches of wheat and cotton to the banks of the Blue Nile, where the hump-backed oxen of Sennaar were lazily turning the creaking wheels of the sakies. The river had here a breadth of more than half a mile, and shone blue and brilliant in the morning sun. Before reaching Kereff, we visited five villages, all built of mats and clay. The inhabitants were warming themselves on the sunny side of the huts, where they still shivered in the cold north-wind. At Kereff, two men brought a large gourd, filled with sour milk, which was very cool and refreshing. The principal wealth of the people consists in their large flocks of sheep and goats. They cultivate barely sufficient wheat and dourra to supply them with a few cakes of coarse bread, and their favorite beverage of om bilbil.

On our return we passed the grave of a native saint, which was decorated with rows of pebbles and a multitude of white pennons, fluttering from the tops of poles stuck in the ground. Several women were seated at the head, apparently paying their devotions to the ghost of the holy man. The older ones were unveiled and ugly, but there was a damsel of about eighteen, who threw part of her cotton mantle over her face, yet allowed us to see that she was quite handsome. She had a pale yellow complexion, showing her Abyssinian descent, large, almond-shaped eyes, and straight black hair which diffused an odor of rancid butter. I found it most agreeable to admire her beauty from the windward side. An old beggar-woman, whose gray hair, skinny face and bleared eyes, flashing from the bottom of deep sockets, made her a fitting picture of a Lapland witch, came up and touched our hands, which she could barely reach as we sat on the dromedaries, which saved us the horror of having her kiss them. We gave her a backsheesh, which she took as if it had been her right. After invoking the name of Allah many times, she went to the grave and brought each of us a handful of dirt, which we carefully put into our pockets, but as carefully emptied out again after we had reached home.

The next morning I rode with the Consul to the junction of the two Niles, about a mile and a half to the west of Khartoum. The land all around is low, and the two rivers meet at right angles, but do not mingle their waters till they have rolled eight or ten miles in their common bed. The White Nile is a light-brown, muddy color, the Blue Nile a dark bluish green. Both rivers are nearly of equal breadth at the point of confluence, but the current of the latter is much the stronger. There is a low green island, called Omdurman, in the White Nile, at its junction. The ferry-boat had just brought over a party of merchants from Kordofan, with their packages of gum. A number of large vessels, belonging to the government, were hauled up on the bank, and several Arabs, under the direction of a Turkish ship-builder, were making repairs. We rode a short distance up the White Nile, over a beach which was deeply printed with the enormous footprints of a whole herd of hippopotami, and then home through the fields of blossoming beans.

The Nile was to me a source of greater interest than all the negro kingdoms between Khartoum and Timbuctoo. There, two thousand miles from his mouth, I found his current as broad, as strong, and as deep as at Cairo, and was no nearer the mystery of his origin. If I should ascend the western of his two branches, I might follow his windings twelve hundred miles further and still find a broad and powerful stream, of whose source even the tribes that dwell in those far regions are ignorant. I am confident that when the hidden fountains shall at last be reached, and the problem of twenty centuries solved, the entire length of the Nile will be found to be not less than four thousand miles, and he will then take his rank with the Mississippi and the Amazon—a sublime trinity of streams! There is, in some respects, a striking resemblance between the Nile and the former river. The Missouri is the true Mississippi, rolling the largest flood and giving his color to the mingled streams. So of the White Nile, which is broad and turbid, and pollutes the clear blue flood that has usurped his name and dignity. In spite of what geographers may say—and they are still far from being united on the subject—the Blue Nile is not the true Nile. There, at the point of junction, his volume of water is greater,[4] but he is fresh from the mountains and constantly fed by large, unfailing affluents, while the White Nile has rolled for more than a thousand miles on nearly a dead level, through a porous, alluvial soil, in which he loses more water than he brings with him.

The Blue Nile, whose source the honest, long-slandered Bruce did actually discover, rises near lat. 11° N. in the mountains of Godjam, on the south-western frontier of Abyssinia. Thence it flows northward into the great lake of Dembea, or Tzana, near its southern extremity. The lake is shallow and muddy, and the river carries his clear flood through it without mixing. He then flows to the south and south-east, under the name of Tzana, along the borders of the kingdom of Shoa, to between lat. 9° and 10°, whence he curves again to the north and finds his way through the mountains of Fazogl to the plains of Sennaar. His entire length cannot be less than eight hundred miles. The stream is navigable as far as the mountains, about three hundred miles from Khartoum, where it is interrupted by rapids. The Arabic name El-bahr el-Azrek, means rather “black” than “blue,” the term azrek being used with reference to objects of a dark, blue-black color; and besides, it is called black, in contradistinction to the Bahr el-Abiad, the white Nile. The boatmen here also frequently speak of the black river as he, and the white as she. When I asked the reason of this, they replied that it was because the former had a stronger current. It is remarkable that the name “Nile,” which is never heard in Egypt, (where the river is simply called el-bahr, “the sea,”) should be retained in Ethiopia. There the boatmen speak of “el-bahr el-Nil,” which name they also sometimes apply to the Blue Nile. It is therefore easy to understand why the latter river should have been looked upon as the main current of the Nile.

After I had been eight or ten days in Khartoum, I began to think of penetrating further into the interior. My intention, on leaving Cairo, was to push on as far as my time and means would allow, and the White Nile was the great point of attraction. The long journey I had already made in order to reach Soudân only whetted my desire of seeing more of the wild, barbaric life of Central Africa, and, owing to the good luck which had saved me from any delay on the road, I could spare three or four weeks for further journeys, before setting out on my return to Egypt. Some of my friends in Khartoum counselled one plan and some another, but after distracting myself in a maze of uncertainties, I returned to my first love, and determined to make a voyage up the White Nile. There was little to be gained by visiting Kordofan, as I had already seen Central African life to better advantage in Khartoum. Sennaar is now only interesting as a station on the way to Abyssinia or the mountains of Fazogl, and in the wild regions along the Atbara it is impossible to travel without an armed escort. As it is exceedingly dangerous for a single boat to pass through the extensive negro kingdoms of the Shillooks and the Dinkas, I had hoped to accompany Dr. Knoblecher’s expedition some distance up the river and then take my chance of returning. The boat belonging to the Catholic Mission, however, had not arrived from Cairo, and the season was so far advanced that the expedition had been postponed until the following November. At the time of my visit, nevertheless, a Maltese trader named Lattif Effendi, was fitting up two large vessels which were shortly to leave on a trading voyage which he intended pushing as far as the Bari country. I could have made arrangements to accompany him, but as he could not return before some time in June, I should have been obliged, in that case, to pass the sickly season in Soudân—a risk scarcely worth the profit, as, with the best possible good luck, I might barely have reached the point attained by Dr. Knoblecher. The Consul proposed my going with Lattif Effendi until I should meet the yearly expedition on its return, and then come down the river with it. This would have enabled me to penetrate to lat. 9°, or perhaps 8°, but after passing the islands of the Shillooks, one sees little except water, grass and mosquitoes, until he reaches the land of the Kyks, in lat. 7°. After weighing carefully all the arguments on both sides, I decided to take a small boat and ascend as far as the islands. Here the new and rich animal and vegetable world of the magnificent river begins to unfold, and in many respects it is the most impressive portion of his stream.

I was fortunate in finding a small vessel, of the kind called sandal—the only craft in port, except the Pasha’s dahabiyeh, which would have answered my purpose. It belonged to a fat old Turk, named Abou-Balta, from whom I engaged it for three hundred and twenty-five piastres. The crew consisted of a raïs, five strong Dongolese sailors, and a black female slave, as cook. The raïs knew the river, but positively refused to take me further than the island of Aba, somewhere between lat. 12° and 13°, on account of the danger of venturing among the Shillooks, without an armed force. I named the boat the John Ledyard, in memory of the first American traveller in Africa. The name was none the less appropriate, since Ledyard was buried beside the Nile, at the outset of a journey undertaken for the purpose of discovering its sources. Dr. Reitz gave me two sheep as provision for the voyage, and the remainder of my outfit cost me about a hundred and twenty piastres in the bazaars of Khartoum.