A journey to Central Africa

by Bayard Taylor

On the third day we left the plain and entered on a region of black, stony ridges, with grass and thorns in the long hollows between them. The sky was so clear that the moon (in her last quarter) was visible until nearly noon. About ten o’clock, from one of the porphyry hills, I caught sight of Djebel Attshàn, or the Mountain of Thirst, which crosses the middle of the Beyooda. It was in the north and north-west, apparently about thirty miles distant. During the morning I saw four beautiful gazelles, not more than a stone’s throw distant. One of them was lame, which induced me to believe that I could catch it. I got down from my camel and crept stealthily to the crest of the ridge, but when I looked down the other side, no gazelle was to be seen. Half a dozen narrow gullies branched away among the loose mounds of stones, and further search would have been useless.

At noon we reached another and different region. The grass and thorns disappeared, and the swells of black gravel gave place to long drifts of bright yellow sand which extended on all sides as far as the eye could reach. We toiled on, over drift after drift, but there was still the same dreary yellow waste, whitening in the distance under the glare of the sun. At first, the air was so tremulous with the radiated heat, that the whole landscape glittered and wavered like the sea, and the brain became giddy from gazing on its unsteady lines. But as the wind began to blow more violently, this disappeared. The sky then became obscured nearly to the zenith, with a dull purple haze, arising from the myriads of fine grains of sand with which the air was filled. The sun became invisible, although there were no clouds in the sky, and we seemed to be journeying under a firmament of rusty copper. The drifts were constantly forming and changing shape, and the sand vibrated along their edges or scudded in swift ripples over the plain, with that dry, sharp sound one hears in winter, when the “North-wind’s masonry” is going on. The air was withering in its fierce heat and occasioned intense thirst, which, fortunately, we were able to relieve. The storm grew more violent and the burning labyrinths of sand more intricate, as we advanced. The path was hidden under drifts five or six feet in height, and the tall yellow walls were creeping every minute nearer, to cover it completely. The piles of stones, however, which the Arabs have made on the tops of the ridges and replace as often as they are thrown down, guided us, and after three hours and a half in a spot which might serve as the fourth circle of Dante’s Hell, we emerged on the open plain and saw again the Mountain of Thirst, which had been hidden all this time. The camels, which were restless and uneasy in the sand, now walked more cheerily. The sun came out again, but the sky still retained its lurid purple hue. We all drank deeply of the brown leathery contents of our water-skins and pushed steadily onward till camping-time, at sunset. While the storm lasted, the Arabs crouched close under the flanks of the camels and sheltered themselves from the sand. Achmet and the Dongolese merchant unrolled their turbans and muffled them around their faces, but on following their example I experienced such a stifling sensation of heat that I at once desisted, and rode with my head exposed as usual.

We halted in a meadow-like hollow, full of abundant grass, in which the weary camels made amends for their hardships. The wind howled so fiercely around my tent that I went to sleep expecting to have it blown about my ears before morning. Djebel Attshàn was dimly visible in the starlight, and we saw the light of fires kindled by the Arabs who live at the wells of Djeekdud. Saïd was anxious to go on to the wells and have a carouse with the natives, and when I refused threatened to leave me and go on alone to Merawe. “Go!” said I, “just as soon as you like”—but this was the very thing he did not want. The heat which I had absorbed through the day began to ooze out again as the temperature of the air fell, and my body glowed until midnight like a mass of molten metal. On lifting up my blanket, that night, a large scorpion tumbled out, but scampered away so quickly that we could not kill him.

We were up betimes the next morning, and off for Bir Djeekdud. At ten o’clock we entered a wide valley extending to the southern base of the mountains. It was quite overgrown with bushy tufts of grass and scattering clumps of trees. Herds of goats and sheep, with a few camels and donkeys, were browsing over its surface, and I saw the Arab herdsmen at a distance. The wells lie in a narrow wady, shut in by the mountains, about two miles east of the caravan track. We therefore halted in the shade of a spreading mimosa, and sent Saïd and the guide’s brother with the water-skins. I took my breakfast leisurely, and was lying on my back, half lulled to sleep by the singing of the wind, when the Dongolese arrived. He gave us to drink from his fresh supply of water, and informed us that the wells in the valley were not good, but that there was a deposit in the rocks above, which was pure and sweet. I therefore sent Ali off in all haste on one of my dromedaries, to have my skins filled from the latter place, which occasioned a further delay of two hours. An Arab family of the small Saūrat tribe, which inhabits that region, was encamped at a little distance, but did not venture to approach.

Ali described the well as a vast natural hollow in the porphyry rock, in the centre of a basin, or valley, near the top of the mountain. The water is held as in a tank; it is from twenty to thirty feet deep, and as clear as crystal. The taste is deliciously pure and fresh. If I had known this in time, I should have visited the place. The valley of Djeekdud is about two miles broad, inclosed on the north by the dark-red porphyry rocks of the Mountain of Thirst, and on the south by a smaller group of similar formation. It is crossed in two places by broad strata of red granite. As water can readily be obtained in any part of it by digging, the whole of it is capable of cultivation.

Leaving our halting place, we journeyed westward through a gate of the mountains into a broader valley, where numerous herds of sheep were feeding. I saw but few Arabs, and those were mostly children, who had charge of the herds. The tribe resides principally in the mountains, on account of greater security against the attacks of enemies. The afternoon was hot like all preceding ones, and my Arabs drank immense quantities of water. We kept on our course until five o’clock, when we encamped opposite a broad valley, which broke into the mountains at right angles to their course. It was a wild spot, and the landscape, barren as it was, possessed much natural beauty. During the afternoon we left the high road to Ambukol, and took a branch track leading to Merawe, which lay more to the northward.

The next morning, after skirting the porphyry range for several hours, we entered a narrow valley leading into its depths. The way was stony and rough, and we travelled for three hours, constantly ascending, up the dry bed of a summer stream. The mountains rose a thousand feet above us in some places. Near the entrance of the valley, we passed an Arab watering a large flock of sheep at a pool of green water which lay in a hollow of the rocks. After ascending the pass for nearly four hours, we crossed the summit ridge and entered on a high table-land, eight or ten miles in length and entirely surrounded by branches of the mountain chain. The plain was thinly covered with grass, mimosas and nebbuk, among which a single camel was browsing. At night we reached the opposite side, and encamped at the foot of a lofty black spur of the mountains, not far from a well which Mohammed called Bir Abou-Seray.

During the night I was troubled with a heavy feeling in the head, and found it almost impossible to sleep. I arose with a sensation of giddiness, which continued all day. At times I found it very difficult to maintain my seat on the dromedary. It required a great effort to keep my eyes open, as the sunshine increased the symptoms. This condition affected my mind in a singular manner. Past scenes in my life revived, with so strong an impression of reality, that I no longer knew where I was. The hot, yellow landscape around me, was a dream; the cries of my camel-drivers were fantastic sounds which my imagination had conjured up. After a most bewildering and fatiguing day, I drank several cups of strong tea, rolled myself in a thick cotton quilt, and sweat to distraction until morning. The moisture I lost relieved my head, as a shower clears a sultry sky, and the symptoms gradually left me. Whether they were caused by breathing a more rarefied atmosphere,—for the plain was nearly fifteen hundred feet above the Nile level—in a heat more than usually intense, or by an attack of that malady which Richardson aptly calls the “intoxication of the Desert,” I cannot decide.

After leaving Bir Abou-Seray, we continued our slow descent of the northern side of the mountain range, by a winding valley, following the dry bed of a summer river. The mountains were a thousand feet high and linked in regular ranges, which had a general north-east and south-west direction. The landscapes of the day were all exceedingly wild and picturesque. The vegetation was abundant along the banks of the river-bed, the doum-palm appearing occasionally among the groves of thorn and nebbuk. In some places the river had washed the bases of the mountains and laid bare their huge strata of rock, whose round black masses glittered in the sunshine, showing the gradual polish of the waves. Towards noon the pass enlarged into a broad plain, six miles in diameter, and entirely bounded by mountains. To the north-east it opened into another and larger plain, across whose blue surface rose the pyramidal peaks of a higher mountain chain than I had yet seen. Some of them were upwards of two thousand feet in height. The scenery here was truly grand and imposing. Beyond the plain we passed into a broader valley, girdled by lower hills. The river-bed, which we crossed from time to time, increased in breadth and showed a more dense vegetation on its banks. We expected to have reached another well, but there was no sign of it at sunset, and as I had already found that my guide, Mohammed, knew nothing of the road, I encamped at once.