On the morning after leaving Akaba Gerri, I had two altercations with my men. Mohammed had left Khartoum without a camel, evidently for the purpose of saving money. In a day or two, however, he limped so much that I put him upon Achmet’s dromedary for a few hours. This was an imposition, for every guide is obliged to furnish his own camel, and I told the old man that he should ride no more. He thereupon prevailed upon Saïd to declare that their contract was to take me to Ambukol, instead of Merawe. This, considering that the route had been distinctly stated to them by Dr. Reitz, in my presence, and put in writing by the moodir, Abdallah Effendi, and that the name of Ambukol was not once mentioned, was a falsehood of the most brazen character. I told the men they were liars, and that sooner than yield to them I would return to Khartoum and have them punished, whereupon they saw they had gone too far, and made a seeming compromise by declaring that they would willingly take me to Merawe, if I wished it.
Towards noon we reached the village of Derreira, nearly opposite the picturesque rapids of the Nile. I gave Mohammed half a piastre and sent him after mareesa, two gallons of which he speedily procured. A large gourd was filled for me, and I drank about a quart without taking breath. Before it had left my lips, I experienced a feeling of vigor and elasticity throughout my whole frame, which refreshed me for the remainder of the day. Mohammed stated that the tents of some of his tribe were only about four hours distant, and asked leave to go and procure a camel, promising to rejoin us at El Metemma the next day. As Saïd knew the way, and could have piloted me in case the old sinner should not return, I gave him leave to go.
Achmet and I rode for nearly two hours over a stony, thorny plain, before we overtook the baggage camels. When at last we came in sight of them, the brown camel was running loose without his load and Saïd trying to catch him. My provision-chests were tumbled upon the ground, the cafass broken to pieces and the chickens enjoying the liberty of the Desert. Saïd, it seemed, had stopped to talk with some women, leaving the camel, which was none too gentle, to take care of himself. Achmet was so incensed that he struck the culprit in the face, whereupon he cried out, with a rueful voice: “ya khosara!” (oh, what a misfortune!). After half an hour’s labor the boxes were repacked, minus their broken crockery, the chickens caught and the camel loaded. The inhabitants of this region were mostly Shygheeans, who had emigrated thither. They are smaller and darker than the people of Màhass, but resemble them in character. In one of the villages which we passed, the soog, or market, was being held. I rode through the crowd to see what they had to sell, but found only the simplest articles: camels, donkeys, sheep, goats; mats, onions, butter, with some baskets of raw cotton and pieces of stuff spun and woven by the natives. The sales must be principally by barter, as there is little money in the country.
In the afternoon we passed another akaba, even more difficult for camels than that of Gerri. The tracks were rough and stony, crossed by frequent strata of granite and porphyry. From the top of one of the ridges I had a fine view of a little valley of mimosas which lay embayed in the hills and washed by the Nile, which here curved grandly round from west to south, his current glittering blue and broad in the sun. The opposite bank was flat and belted with wheat fields, beyond which stretched a gray forest of thorns and then the yellow savannas of Shendy, walled in the distance by long, blue, broken ranges of mountains. The summit of a hill near our road was surrounded with a thick wall, formed of natural blocks of black porphyry. It had square, projecting bastions at regular intervals, and an entrance on the western side. From its appearance, form and position, it had undoubtedly been a stronghold of some one of the Arab tribes, and can claim no great antiquity. I travelled on until after sunset, when, as no village appeared, I camped in a grove of large mimosas, not far from the Nile. A few Shygheean herdsmen were living in brush huts near at hand, and dogs and jackals howled incessantly through the night.
On the fifth day I reached the large town of El Metemma, nearly opposite Shendy, and the capital of a negro kingdom, before the Egyptian usurpation. The road, on approaching it, leads over a narrow plain, covered with a shrub resembling heather, bordered on one side by the river, and on the other by a long range of bare red sand-hills. We journeyed for more than three hours, passing point after point of the hills, only to find other spurs stretching out ahead of us. From the intense heat I was very anxious to reach El Metemma, and was not a little rejoiced when I discerned a grove of date-trees, which had been pointed out to me from Shendy, a month before, as the landmark of the place. Soon a cluster of buildings appeared on the sandy slopes, but as we approached, I saw they were ruins. We turned another point, and reached another group of tokuls and clay houses—ruins also. Another point, and more ruins, and so for more than a mile before we reached the town, which commences at the last spur of the hills, and extends along the plain for a mile and a half.
It is a long mass of one-story mud buildings, and the most miserable place of its size that I have seen in Central Africa. There is no bazaar, but an open market-place, where the people sit on the ground and sell their produce, consisting of dourra, butter, dates, onions, tobacco and a few grass mats. There may be a mosque in the place, but in the course of my ramble through the streets, I saw nothing that looked like one. Half the houses appeared to be uninhabited, and the natives were a hideous mixture of the red tribes of Màhass and Shygheea and the negro races of Soudân. A few people were moving lazily through the dusty and filthy lanes, but the greater portion were sitting in the earth, on the shady side of the houses. In one of the streets I was taken for the Medical Inspector of the town, a part of whose business it is to see that it is kept free from filth. Two women came hastily out of the houses and began sweeping vigorously, saying to me as I came up: “You see, we are sweeping very clean.” It would have been much more agreeable to me, had the true Inspector gone his rounds the day before. El Metemma and Shendy are probably the most immoral towns in all Central Africa. The people informed me that it was a regular business for persons to buy female slaves, and hire them for the purpose of prostitution, all the money received in this vile way going into the owner’s pocket.
I was occupied the rest of the day and the next morning in procuring and filling additional water-skins, and preparing to cross the Beyooda. Achmet had a quantity of bread baked, for the journey would occupy seven or eight days, and there was no possibility of procuring provisions on the road. Mohammed did not make his appearance at the appointed time, and I determined to start without him, my caravan being increased by a Dongolese merchant, and a poor Shygheean, whose only property was a club and a wooden bowl, and who asked leave to help tend the camels for the sake of food and water on the way. All of the Beyooda, which term is applied to the broad desert region west of the Nile and extending southward from Nubia to Kordofan and Dar-Fūr, is infested with marauding tribes of Arabs, and though at present their depredations are less frequent than formerly, still, from the total absence of all protection, the traveller is exposed to considerable risk. For this reason, it is not usual to find small parties traversing this route, as in the Nubian Desert.
I added to my supplies a fat sheep, a water-skin filled with mareesa, a sheaf of raw onions (which are a great luxury in the Desert), and as many fowls as could be procured in El Metemma. Just as we were loading the camels, who should come up but Beshir and two or three more of the Mahassee sailors, who had formed part of my crew from Berber to Khartoum. They came up and kissed my hand, exclaiming: “May God prosper you, O Effendi!” They immediately set about helping to load the camels, giving us, meanwhile, news of every thing that had happened. Beshir’s countenance fell when I asked him about his Metemma sweetheart, Gammerò-Betahadjerò; she had proved faithless to him. The America was again on her way from Berber to Khartoum, with a company of merchants. The old slave, Bakhita, unable to bear the imputation of being a hundred and fifty years old, had run away from the vessel. When the camels were loaded and we were ready to mount, I gave the sailors a few piastres to buy mareesa and sent them away rejoicing.