We arose by daybreak, hoping to reach the Nile. After somewhat more than two hours’ journey, we met a caravan of about three hundred camels, laden with bales of cotton drillings, for the clothing of the new regiments of soldiers then being raised in Soudân. The foremost camels were a mile from Bir Khannik, while the hindmost were still drinking at the well. The caravan had Kababish drivers and guides—wild, long-haired, half-naked Arabs, with spears in their hands and shields of hippopotamus hide on their shoulders. They told us we were still a day and a half from Merawe. We rode on to the well, which was an immense pit, dug in the open plain. It was about fifty feet deep, and the Arabs were obliged to draw the water in skins let down with ropes. The top curved into the well like a shallow bowl, from the earth continually crumbling down, and the mouth of the shaft was protected by trunks of trees, on which the men stood while they drew the water. Around the top were shallow basins lined with clay, out of which the camels drank. The fierce Kababish were shouting and gesticulating on all sides as we rode up—some leading the camels to kneel and drink, some holding the water-skins, and others brandishing their spears and swords in angry contention. Under the hot sun, on the sandy plain, it was a picture truly mid-African in all its features. The water had an insipid, brackish taste, and I was very glad that I had prevented my Arabs from drinking all we had brought from the porphyry fountain of Djeekdud. We watered our camels, however, which detained us long enough to see a fight between two of the Kababish guides. There were so many persons to interfere that neither could injure the other, but the whole group of actors and sympathizers struggling on the brink of the well, came near being precipitated to the bottom.
Our road now turned to the north, through a gap in the low hills and over a tract of burnt, barren, rolling wastes of white sand and gravel. Towards evening we came again to the river-bed, here broad and shallow. This part of the Desert is inhabited by the Saūrat and Huni tribes, and we saw large herds of sheep and goats wherever the halfeh grass abounded. At sunset there were no signs of the Nile, so I had the tent pitched in the middle of the dry river-channel. In front of us, on a low mound, the red walls of a ruined building shone in the last rays of the sun.
The next day—the eighth since leaving El Metemma—was intensely hot and sultry, without a breath of air stirring. While walking towards the ruins, I came upon two herds of gazelles, so tame that I approached within thirty yards, and could plainly see the expression of surprise and curiosity in their dark eyes. When I came too near, they would bleat like lambs, bound away a little distance and then stop again. The building, which stood on the stony slope of a hill, was surrounded with loose walls, in a dilapidated condition. The foundation, rising about six feet above the earth, is stone, above which the walls are of brick, covered with a thin coating of cement. The building is about eighty feet in length by forty in breadth, but the walls which remain are not more than twenty feet high. It is believed to have been an ancient Coptic monastery, and probably dates from the earlier ages of Christianity. The ruins of other houses, built of loose stones, surround the principal edifice, which was undoubtedly a church and the ground around is strewn with fragments of burnt brick and pottery. There is a churchyard near at hand, with tombstones which contain inscriptions both in Greek and Coptic.
We rode slowly down the broad river-bed, which gradually widened, and after two or three hours saw far in advance a line of red, glowing sand-hills, which I knew could not be on the southern side of the Nile. Still we went on, under the clear, hot sky, the valley widening into a plain the while, and I sought anxiously for some sign that the weary Desert was crossed. Finally, I saw, above the endless clusters of thorns, a line of darker, richer green, far away in the burning distance, and knew it to be a grove of date-palms—the glorious signal of the Nile. This put new life into me, and thenceforth I felt the scorching heat no longer. To the north, beyond the palms, appeared an isolated mountain of singular form—the summit being flat and the sides almost perpendicular. It must be Djebel Berkel, I thought, and I told Mohammed so, but he said it was not. Just then, I saw an Arab herdsman among the thorns and called out to him to know the name of the mountain. “Djebel Berkel,” said he. He then accosted Mohammed: “Where are you going?” “To Merawe.” “Are you the guide?” he again inquired, bursting into a loud laugh. “You are a fine guide; there is Merawe!” pointing in a direction very different from that we were going. This completed the old fellow’s discomfiture. We were still five or six miles distant from the river and took a random path over the plain, in the direction indicated by the herdsman. The palms rose higher and showed a richer foliage; mud walls appeared in their shade, and a tall minaret on the opposite bank of the river pointed out the location of the town. I rode down out of the drear, hot sand—the sea where I had been drifting for seven wearisome days—to the little village of Abdôm, embowered in a paradise of green; palms above, dazzling wheat-fields, dark cotton-fields and blossoming beans below. A blessed resting-place!
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THREE DAYS AT NAPATA.
Our whereabouts—Shekh Mohammed Abd e’-Djebàl—My residence at Abdôm—Crossing the River—A Superb Landscape—The Town of Merawe—Ride to Djebel Berkel—The Temples of Napata—Ascent of the Mountain—Ethiopian Panorama—Lost and Found—The Pyramids—The Governor of Merawe—A Scene in the Divan—The Shekh and I—The Governor Dines with me—Ruins of the City of Napata—A Talk about Religions—Engaging Camels for Wadi-Halfa—The Shekh’s Parting Blessing.
“Under the palm-trees by the river’s side.”—Keats.
Abdôm, the friendly haven into which I had drifted after an eight days’ voyage in the fiery sea of the Desert, is a village on the eastern bank of the Nile, which, after passing Abou-Hammed, flows to the south-west and south until it reaches the frontier of Dongola. On the opposite bank is Merawe, the former capital of Dar Shygheea, which must not be confounded with the ancient Meroë, the ruins of which, near Shendy, I have already described. True, the identity of the names at first deceived antiquarians, who supposed the temples and pyramids in this neighborhood to have belonged to the capital of the old Hierarchy of Meroë; but it is now satisfactorily established that they mark the site of Napata, the capital of Ethiopia up to the time of the Cæsars. It was the limit of the celebrated expedition of the Roman soldiers, under Petronius. Djebel Berkel, at whose base the principal remains are found, is in lat. 18° 35′, or thereabouts.