CHAPTER XXXIV.
OLD DONGOLA AND NEW DONGOLA.
Appearance of the Country—Korti—The Town of Ambukol—The Caravan reorganized—A Fiery Ride—We reach Edabbe—An Illuminated Landscape—A Torment—Nubian Agriculture—Old Dongola—The Palace-Mosque of the Nubian Kings—A Panorama of Desolation—The Old City—Nubian Gratitude—Another Sand-Storm—A Dreary Journey—The Approach to Handak—A House of Doubtful Character—The Inmates—Journey to El Ordee (New Dongola)—Khoorshid Bey—Appearance of the Town.
I left Abdôm on the morning of February twentieth. Our road lay southward, along the edge of the wheat-fields, over whose waves we saw the island-like groups of palms at a little distance. For several miles the bank of the river was covered with a continuous string of villages. After skirting this glorious garden land for two hours, we crossed a sandy tract, overgrown with the poisonous euphorbia, to avoid a curve in the river. During the whole of the afternoon, we travelled along the edge of the cultivated land, and sometimes in the midst of it, obliging my camels to stumble clumsily over the raised trenches which carried water from the river to the distant parts of the fields. Large, ruined forts of unburnt brick, exceedingly picturesque at a distance, stood at intervals between the desert and the harvest-land.
The next morning was hot and sultry, with not a breath of air stirring. I rose at dawn and walked ahead for two hours, through thickets of euphorbia higher than my head, and over patches of strong, dark-green grass. The sakias were groaning all along the shore, and the people every where at work in the fields. The wheat was in various stages of growth, from the first thick green of the young blades to the full head. Barley was turning a pale yellow, and the dookhn, the heads of which had already been gathered, stood brown and dry. Djebel Deeka, on my right, rose bold and fair above the lines of palms, and showed a picturesque glen winding in between its black-purple peaks. It was a fine feature of the landscape, which would have been almost too soft and lovely without it.
Before nine o’clock we passed the large town of Korti, which, however, is rather a cluster of small towns, scattered along between the wheat-fields and the river. Some of the houses were large and massive, and with their blank walls and block-like groups, over which the doum-tree spread its arch and the date-palm hung its feathery crown, made fine African pictures—admirable types of the scenery along the Nubian Nile. Beyond the town we came upon a hot, dusty plain, sprinkled with stunted euphorbia, over which I could see the point where the Nile turns westward. Towards noon we reached the town of Ambukol, which I found to be a large agglomeration of mud and human beings, on the sand-hills, a quarter of a mile from the river. An extensive pile of mud in the centre denoted a fortress or government station of some sort. There were a few lazy Arabs sitting on the ground, on the shady side of the walls, and some women going back and forth with water-jars, but otherwise, for all the life it presented, the place might have been deserted. The people we met saluted me with much respect, and those who were seated rose and remained standing until I had passed. I did not enter the town, but made direct for a great acacia tree near its western end. The nine camels and nine men of my caravan all rested under the shade, and there was room for as many more. A number of Arabs looked on from a distance, or hailed my camel-men, to satisfy their curiosity regarding me, but no one came near or annoyed us in any way. I took breakfast leisurely on my carpet, drank half a gourd of mareesa, and had still an hour to wait, before the new camels were laden. The Kababish, who had accompanied me from Khartoum, wanted a certificate, so I certified that Saïd was a good camel-man and Mohammed worthless as a guide. They then drank a parting jar of mareesa, and we went from under the cool acacia into the glare of the fierce sun. Our road all the afternoon was in the Desert, and we were obliged to endure a most intense and sultry heat.
The next day I travelled westward over long akabas, or reaches of the Desert, covered with clumps of thorns, nebbuk and the jasmine tree. The long mountain on the opposite bank was painted in rosy light against the sky, as if touched with the beams of a perpetual sunrise. My eyes always turned to it with a sense of refreshment, after the weary glare of the sand. In the morning there was a brisk wind from the north-east, but towards noon it veered to the south-west, and then to the south, continuing to blow all day with great force. As I rode westward through the hot hours of the afternoon, it played against my face like a sheet of flame. The sky became obscured with a dull, bluish haze, and the sands of the Beyooda, on my left, glimmered white and dim, as if swept by the blast of a furnace. There were occasional gusts that made the flesh shrink as if touched with a hot iron, and I found it impossible to bear the wind full on my face. One who has never felt it, cannot conceive the withering effect of such a heat. The earth seems swept with the first fires of that conflagration beneath which the heavens will shrivel up as a scroll, and you instinctively wonder to see the palms standing green and unsinged. My camel-men crept behind the camels to get away from it, and Achmet and Ali muffled up their faces completely. I could not endure the sultry heat occasioned by such a preparation, and so rode all day with my head in the fire.
About three o’clock in the afternoon we approached the Nile again. There was a grove of sont and doum-trees on the bank, surrounding a large quadrangular structure of clay, with square towers at the corners. Graveyards stretched for nearly a mile along the edge of the Desert, and six large, dome-like heaps of clay denoted the tombs of as many holy men. We next came upon the ruins of a large village, with a fort and a heavy palace-like building of mud. Before reaching Edabbe, the terminus of the caravan route from Kordofan, the same evening, I rode completely around the bend of the Nile, so that my dromedary’s head was at last turned towards Wadi Halfa. I was hot, tired, and out of temper, but a gourd of cool water, at the first house we reached, made all right again. There were seven vessels in the river, waiting for the caravans. One had just arrived from Kordofan, and the packages of gum were piled up along the shore. We were immediately followed by the sailors, who were anxious that I should hire their vessels. I rode past the town, which does not contain more than thirty houses in all, and had my tent pitched on the river bank.
The Nile is here half a mile broad, and a long reach of his current is visible to the north and south. The opposite bank was high and steep, lined at the water’s edge with a belt of beans and lupins, behind which rose a line of palms, and still higher the hills of pale, golden-hued sand, spotted like a leopard’s hide, with clumps of a small mimosa. The ground was a clear, tawny yellow, but the spots were deep emerald. Below the gorgeous drapery of these hills, the river glittered in a dark, purple-blue sheet. The coloring of the mid-African landscapes is truly unparalleled. To me, it became more than a simple sense; it grew to be an appetite. When, after a journey in the Desert, I again beheld the dazzling green palms and wheat-fields of the Nile, I imagined that there was a positive sensation on the retina. I felt, or seemed to feel, physically, the colored rays—beams of pure emerald, topaz and amethystine lustre—as they struck the eye.