A journey to Central Africa

by Bayard Taylor

At Edabbe I first made acquaintance with a terrible pest, which for many days afterwards occasioned me much torment—a small black fly, as venomous as the musquito, and much more difficult to drive away. I sat during the evening with my head, neck and ears closely bound up, notwithstanding the heat. After the flies left, a multitude of beetles, moths, winged ants and other nameless creatures came in their place. I sat and sweltered, murmuring for the waters of Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, and longing for a glass of sherbet cooled with the snows of Lebanon.

We were up with the first glimmering of dawn. The sky was dull and hazy, and the sun came up like a shield of rusty copper, as we started. Our path lay through the midst of the cultivated land, sometimes skirting the banks of the Nile, and sometimes swerving off to the belts of sont and euphorbia which shut out the sand. The sakias, turned by a yoke of oxen each, were in motion on the river, and the men were wading through the squares of wheat, cotton and barley, turning the water into them. All farming processes, from sowing to reaping, were going on at the same time. The cultivated land was frequently more than a mile in breadth, and all watered from the river. The sakias are taxed four hundred and seventy-five piastres each, notwithstanding the sum fixed by Government is only three hundred. The remainder goes into the private treasuries of the Governors. For this reason, many persons, unable to pay the tax, emigrate into Kordofan and elsewhere. This may account for the frequent tracts of the finest soil which are abandoned. I passed many fine fields, given up to the halfeh grass, which grew most rank and abundant. My dromedary had a rare time of it, cropping the juicy bunches as he went along. The country is thickly settled, and our road was animated with natives, passing back and forth.

About noon, we saw in advance, on the eastern bank of the Nile, a bold, bluff ridge, crowned with a large square building. This the people pointed out to us as the location of Old Dongola. As we approached nearer, a long line of mud buildings appeared along the brow of the hill, whose northern slope was cumbered with ruins. We left the caravan track and rode down to the ferry place at the river, over a long stretch of abandoned fields, where the cotton was almost choked out with grass, and the beans and lentils were growing wild in bunches. After my tent had been pitched in a cotton-patch, I took a grateful bath in the river, and then crossed in the ferry-boat to the old town. The hill upon which it is built terminates abruptly in a precipice of red sandstone rock, about a hundred feet in height. Four enormous fragments have been broken off, and lie as they fell, on the edge of the water. A steep path through drifts of sliding yellow sand leads around the cliffs, up to the dwellings. I found the ascent laborious, as the wind, which had veered to the west, was as hot as on the previous day; but a boatman and one of my camel-men seized a hand each and hauled me up most conveniently. At the summit, all was ruin; interminable lines of walls broken down, and streets filled up with sand. I went first to the Kasr, or Palace, which stands on the highest part of the hill. It is about forty feet in height, having two stories and a broad foundation wall, and is built mostly of burnt brick and sandstone. It is the palace of the former Dongolese Kings, and a more imposing building than one would expect to find in such a place. Near the entrance is an arched passage, leading down to some subterranean chambers, which I did not explore. It needed something more than the assurance of an old Nubian, however, to convince me that there was an underground passage from this place to Djebel Berkel. A broad flight of stone steps ascended to the second story, in which are many chambers and passages. The walls are covered with Arabic inscriptions, written in the plaster while it was yet moist. The hall of audience had once a pavement of marble, several blocks of which still remain, and the ceiling is supported in the centre by three shafts of granite, taken from some old Egyptian ruin. The floors are covered with tiles of burnt brick, but the palm-logs which support them have given away in many places, rendering one’s footing insecure. Behind the hall of audience is a passage, with a niche, in each side of which is also an ancient pillar of granite. From the tenor of one of the Arabic inscriptions, it appears that the building was originally designed for a mosque, and that it was erected in the year 1317, by Saf-ed-deen Abdallah, after a victory over the infidels.

I ascended to the roof of the palace, which is flat and paved with stones. The view was most remarkable. The height on which Old Dongola is built, falls off on all sides, inland as well as towards the river, so that to the east one overlooks a wide extent of desert—low hills of red sand, stretching away to a dim, hot horizon. To the north, the hill slopes gradually to the Nile, covered with the ruins of old buildings. North-east, hardly visible through the sandy haze, rose a high, isolated peak, with something like a tower on its summit. To the south and east the dilapidated city covered the top of the hill—a mass of ashy-gray walls of mud and stone, for the most part roofless and broken down, while the doors, courts and alleys between them were half choked up with the loose sand blown in from the Desert. The graveyards of the former inhabitants extended for more than a mile through the sand, over the dreary hills behind the town. Among them were a great number of conical, pointed structures of clay and stones, from twenty to thirty feet in height. The camel-men said they were the tombs of rossool—prophets, or holy men. I counted twenty-five in that portion of the cemetery which was visible. The whole view was one of entire and absolute desolation, heightened the more by the clouds of sand which filled the air, and which, in their withering heat, seemed to be raining ruin upon the land.

I afterwards walked through the city, and was surprised to find many large, strong houses of stone and burnt brick, with spacious rooms, the walls of which were plastered and whitewashed. The lintels of the doors and windows were stone, the roofs in many places, where they still remained, covered with tiles, and every thing gave evidence of a rich and powerful city. Now, probably not more than one-fifth of the houses are inhabited. Here and there the people have spread a roofing of mats over the open walls, and nestled themselves in the sand. I saw several such places, the doors, or rather entrances to which, were at the bottom of loose sand-hills that constantly slid down and filled the dingy dwellings. In my walk I met but one or two persons, but as we returned again to the river, I saw a group of Dongolese women on the highest part of the cliff. They were calling in shrill tones and waving their hands to some persons in the ferry-boat on the river below, and needed no fancy to represent the daughters of Old Dongola lamenting over its fall.

Some Dongolese djellabiàt, or merchants, just returned from Kordofan, were in the ferry-boat. One of them showed me a snuff-box which he had bought from a native of Fertit, beyond Dar-Fūr. It was formed of the shell of some fruit, with a silver neck attached. By striking the head of the box on the thumb-nail, exactly one pinch was produced. The raïs took off his mantle, tied one end of it to the ring in the bow and stood thereon, holding the other end with both hands stretched above his head. He made a fine bronze figure-head for the boat, and it was easy to divine her name: The Nubian. We had on board a number of copper-hued women, whose eyelids were stained with kohl, which gave them a ghastly appearance.

Soon after my tent had been pitched, in the afternoon, a man came riding up from the river on a donkey, leading a horse behind him. He had just crossed one of the water-courses on his donkey, and was riding on, holding the horse’s rope in his hand, when the animal started back at the water-course, jerking the man over the donkey’s tail and throwing him violently on the ground. He lay as if dead for a quarter of an hour, but Achmet finally brought him to consciousness by pouring the contents of a leathern water-flask over his head, and raising him to a sitting posture. His brother, who had charge of a sakia on the bank, brought me an angareb in the evening, in acknowledgment of this good office. It is a good trait in the people, that they are always grateful for kindness. The angareb, however, did not prove of much service, for I was so beset by the black gnats that it was impossible to sleep. They assailed my nose, mouth, ears and eyes in such numbers that I was almost driven mad. I rubbed my face with strong vinegar, but it only seemed to attract them the more. I unwound my turban, and rolled it around my neck and ears, but they crept under the folds and buzzed and bit until I was forced to give up the attempt.

Our road, the next morning, lay near the river, through tracks of thick halfeh, four or five feet high. We constantly passed the ruins of villages and the naked frames of abandoned sakias. The soil was exceedingly rich, as the exuberant growth of halfeh proved, but for miles and miles there was no sign of life. The tyranny of the Turks has depopulated one of the fairest districts of Nubia. The wind blew violently from the north, and the sandy haze and gray vapor in the air became so dense that I could scarcely distinguish the opposite bank of the Nile. The river was covered with white caps, and broke on the beach below with a wintry roar. As we journeyed along through the wild green grass and orchards of sont, passing broken walls and the traces of old water-courses, I could have believed myself travelling through some deserted landscape of the North. I was chilled with the strong wind, which roared in the sont and made my beard whistle under my nose like a wisp of dry grass. Several ships passed us, scudding up stream under bare poles, and one, which had a single reef shaken out of her large sail, dashed by like a high-pressure steamer.

After two or three hours we passed out of this region. The Desert extended almost to the water’s edge, and we had nothing but sand and thorns. The wind by this time was more furious than ever, and the air was so full of sand that we could not see more than a hundred yards on either hand. The sun gave out a white, ghastly light, which increased the dreariness of the day. All trace of the road was obliterated, and we could only travel at random among the thorns, following the course of the Nile, which we were careful to keep in view. My eyes, ears, and nostrils were soon filled with sand, and I was obliged to bind my turban so as nearly to cover my face, leaving only space enough to take a blind view of the way we were going. At breakfast time, after two hours of this martyrdom, I found a clump of thorns so thick as to shut off the wind, but no sooner had I dismounted and crept under its shelter than I experienced a scorching heat from the sun, and was attacked by myriads of the black gnats. I managed to eat something in a mad sort of way, beating my face and ears continually, and was glad to thrust my head again into the sand-storm, which drove off the worse pests. So for hours we pursued our journey. I could not look in the face of the wind, which never once fell. The others suffered equally, and two of the camel-men lagged so, that we lost sight of them entirely. It was truly a good fortune that I did not take the short road, east of the Nile, from Merawe to New Dongola. In the terrible wastes of the Nubian Desert, we could scarcely have survived such a storm.

Nearly all the afternoon we passed over deserted tracts, which were once covered with flourishing fields. The water-courses extend for nearly two miles from the river, and cross the road at intervals of fifty yards. But now the villages are level with the earth, and the sand whistles over the traces of fields and gardens, which it has not yet effaced. Two hours before sunset the sun disappeared, and I began to long for the town of Handak, our destination. Achmet and I were ahead, and the other camels were not to be seen any longer, so as sunset came on I grew restless and uneasy. The palms by this time had appeared again on the river’s brink, and there was a village on our left, in the sand. We asked again for Handak. “Just at the corner of yon palms,” said the people. They spoke with a near emphasis, which encouraged me. The Arabic dialect of Central Africa has one curious characteristic, which evidently springs from the want of a copious vocabulary. Degree, or intensity of meaning is usually indicated by accent alone. Thus, when they point to an object near at hand they say: henàk, “there;” if it is a moderate distance off, they lengthen the sound into “hen-a-a-ak;” while, if it is so far as to be barely visible, the last syllable is sustained with a full breath—“hen-a-a-a-a-a-àk!” In the same way, saā signifies “an hour;” sa-a-a-ā, “two hours,” &c. This habit of speech gives the language a very singular and eccentric character.