A journey to Central Africa

by Bayard Taylor

We made but little headway during the afternoon, although the men worked faithfully. Djebel Deyoos, whose loose cluster of peaks is seen for a great distance over the plains of Kordofan, still kept us company, and did not pass out of our horizon until the next evening. The men towed for several hours, and as the shore was flat and the river very shallow they were obliged to walk in the water. While Achmet was preparing dinner, a fish about the size of a herring vaulted upon deck and fell at his feet. He immediately clapped it into the frying-pan and presented me with an acceptable dish. To his unbounded astonishment and my great satisfaction, the same thing happened three days in succession, at precisely the same hour. “Wallah, master!” he exclaimed: “it is wonderful! I never knew such a thing to happen in Egypt, and it must certainly be a sign of good fortune. If you were not a lucky man, the fish would never offer themselves for your dinner in this way.”

By night the men could make no headway against the wind, which continued unabated nearly all the next day. They worked hard, stimulated by the promise of an abundant supply of mareesa at the next Hassaniyeh village. In the afternoon we passed Tura, which I recognized by the herds of camels on shore and the ferry-boats passing back and forth across the broad stream. I walked an hour or two while the men were towing, but was obliged to keep to the shore, on account of the burr-grass which covered all the country inland. This part of the river is thickly settled by the Hassaniyehs, whose principal wealth appears to consist in their sheep, goats and camels. They complained very much of the Shillooks, who come down the river on predatory incursions, carry off their sheep and dourra, and frequently kill the children who tend the herds.

By dint of unremitting exertions, we reached a small village which the raïs called Wad Shèllayeh, about two hours after sunset. The men carried me ashore through the shallows, and I went with them to the village to perform my promise regarding the mareesa. We extinguished the lantern for fear of alarming the inhabitants, and walked slowly through the wilderness of thorns. The village lay half a mile inland, between two low hills of sand. The dwellings were mere tokuls, like those of the Shillooks, and made of the long grass of the Desert. Each house was surrounded with a fence of thorns. The inhabitants were sitting at the doors in the moonlight, calling out to each other and exchanging jokes, while herds of the slender yellow dogs of Soudân barked on all sides. While the raïs and sailors were procuring their mareesa I entered one of the tokuls, which was superior to those I had already seen, inasmuch as it contained an inner chamber or tent, made of fine yellow grass, and serving as a canopy to the family angareb. The people had kindled a fire on the ground, and the dry mimosa branches were blazing in close proximity to the straw walls of their dwelling. They were greatly inferior to the Hassaniyehs of the first village, both in appearance and courtesy of manners. The mareesa, which the raïs at last brought, was weak, insipid stuff, and I returned to the boat, leaving the men to drain the jars.

In the morning we reached another large Hassaniyeh village, which was also called Wad Shèllayeh. It was the only village on the river worthy of notice, as it had four vessels moored to the shore, and boasted a few mud houses in addition to its array of tokuls. Several of the latter were built in tent form and covered with a striped cloth made of camel’s hair. I entered the residence of the shekh, who, however, was absent with his wife to attend the funeral of a relative. The tent was thirty feet long, with an arched top, and contained two inner chambers. The sides were ornamented with gourds, skins and other articles, grouped with some taste, and large quantities of the cowries, or small white shells, which are used as currency in some parts of Central Africa, were sewed upon the cloth cover, in the form of crosses and stars. I looked into the principal chamber, which inclosed a broad and handsome angareb, made of plaited palm-leaves. The walls were entirely concealed by the articles hung upon them, and every thing exhibited a taste and neatness which is rare among the Arab tribes. The tent was in charge of the shekh’s niece, a handsome girl of about eighteen, and an old woman with three children, the youngest of which was suckled by a black slave. He was an ebony Cupid of a year old, rejoicing in the bunches of white shells that hung from his neck, wrists and ankles. He exhibited a curiosity to touch me, and I took him in my arms and addressed him in Christian nursery tongue. The sound of my voice, however, was more horrible than the color of my skin. He set up a yell and kicked out his little black, satin-skinned legs till I was obliged to hand him over to the slave nurse.

From the bank on which the village is built, I could see beyond the trees of the opposite shore, a wide stretch of the plains of Kordofan—a level savanna of yellow grass, extending without a break to the horizon. During the afternoon, while the men were resting from their rowing, Bahr, the Dinka cook, got into a dispute with one of them, and finally worked herself into such a rage that she jumped overboard with the intention of drowning herself, and would have done so, had not one of the sailors plunged after her and hauled her ashore, in spite of her violent struggles and endeavors to thrust her head under water. When she found she could not indulge in this recreation, she sat down on the ground, burst into a paroxysm of angry tears, and in a quarter of an hour went back to grind her dourra, in the best possible humor. Her name, Bahr, signifies “the sea,” but she was an Undine of the Black Sea, and the White Nile refused to receive her.

We went gloriously down stream that evening, with a light west wind filling the little sail and the men at their oars, singing shrill choruses in the Dongolese and Djaaleyn dialects. The White Nile, which is here three miles broad, was as smooth as glass, and glimmered far and bright under the moon. The shores were still, in all their dead level expanse, and had it not been for the uneven line which their belts of thorn-trees drew along the horizon, I could have imagined that we were floating in mid-ocean. While the men halted for breakfast the next morning, I landed and walked ahead, hoping to shoot a wild duck with my pistol. Notwithstanding there were hundreds along the shore, I found it impossible to get within shooting distance, as they invariably made into the river on my approach. An attempt to gain something by running suddenly towards them, terminated in my sticking fast in the mud and losing my red slippers. I then crept through the scattering wood of mimosas to get a chance at a pigeon, but some spirit of mistrust had taken possession of the birds, and as long as I had a shot left there were none within reach. When my two barrels were spent they sat on every side in the most familiar proximity.

Notwithstanding there were very few villages on the river’s bank, the country was thickly inhabited. The people prefer building their dwellings a mile inland, and going to the river for water. This custom probably originated in their fear of the Shillooks, which led them to place their dwellings in situations most easy of defence. At one of the fording-places I found a number of women and children filling the water-skins and lifting them upon the backs of donkeys. Many hundreds of the hump-backed cattle, peculiar to the country, were collected along the shore. They have straight backs behind the hump, (which is a projection above the shoulders, four to six inches high) clean flanks, large, powerful necks, and short, straight horns. They eyed me with an expression of great curiosity, and some of the bulls evidently deliberated whether they should attack me. The people in this region were Hassaniyehs, and the men resembled those of the first village I visited. They were tall, with straight features and a feminine expression of countenance, which was probably caused by their wearing their hair parted in the middle, plaited into long braids and fastened at the back of the head.

About noon we came in sight of Djebel Tinneh, which stands over against the village of Shekh Moussa, and serves as a landmark to the place. At sunset we saw the boat of Reschid Kashif, the Governor of the tributary territories of the White Nile, anchored near the western bank. Two of my sailors had previously been employed by him, and as they had not received all their wages, they asked permission to cross the river and apply for the money. This Reschid Kashif was a boy of twelve or thirteen years of age, son of the former Governor, Suleyman Kashif, who was so much esteemed by the tribes on the river that after his death the Pasha invested his young child with the office. The latter was also quite popular with the natives, who attributed to him a sagacity marvellous for his years. He paid the men the money due them, sent his compliments to me, and inquired why I did not visit him. It was dusk by this time, and I did not wish to delay the boat; besides, as I was a stranger and a Sultan, courtesy required that he should pay the first visit.

We made the remainder of the voyage without further incident than that of slaughtering one of our sheep, near Djebel Aūllee. The wind was so light that our progress down the stream was rapid, and at sunset on Friday, January thirtieth, I recognized the spot where Dr. Reitz took leave of me, on the upward voyage. The evening on the broad river was glorious; the half-moon, being just overhead, was unseen, yet filled the air with light, and my natal planet burned white and clear in the west. At ten o’clock we reached the island of Omdurman, and wheeled into the Blue Nile. The camp-fires of Kordofan merchants were gleaming on the western bank. The barking of the dogs in Khartoum and the creaking wheels of the sakias were welcome sounds to our ears, as we slowly glided past the gardens. Ere long, the minaret of the city glimmered faintly in the moonlight and we recognized the buildings of the Catholic Mission. “God is great!” said Achmet, devoutly; “since we have been so near the end of the world, Khartoum appears to me as beautiful as Cairo.” It was nearly midnight when we came to anchor, having made a voyage of about five hundred miles in nine days. My friends were all abed, and I lay down for the night in the little cabin of my boat, exclaiming, like Achmet: “God is great!”