We pushed on till the spot was reached, but as far ahead as the sand would permit us to see, could discern no house. We asked again; the town commenced at the next corner of the palms ahead of us. I think this thing must have happened to us five or six times, till at last I got into that peculiarly amiable mood which sees nothing good in Heaven or Earth. If my best friend had come to meet me, I should have given him but a sour greeting. My eyes were blinded, my head dull and stupid, and my bones sore from twelve hours in the saddle. As it grew dark, we were overtaken by four riders mounted on fine dromedaries. They were going at a sweeping trot, and our beasts were ambitious enough to keep pace with them for some time. One of them was a stately shekh, with a white robe and broad gold border and fringe. From what the people said of him, I took him to be the Melek, or King of Dongola.
Meanwhile, it was growing dark. We could see nothing of the town, though a woman who had been walking beside us, said we were there already. She said she had a fine house, which we could have for the night, since it was almost impossible for a tent to stand in such a wind. As I had already dipped into the night, I determined to reach Handak at all hazards, and after yet another hour, succeeded. Achmet and I dismounted in a ruined court-yard, and while I sat on a broken wall, holding the camels, he went to look for our men. It was a dismal place, in the gathering darkness, with the wind howling and the sand drifting on all sides, and I wondered what fiend had ever tempted me to travel in Africa. Before long the woman appeared and guided us to a collection of miserable huts on the top of the hill. Her fine house proved to be a narrow, mud-walled room, with a roof of smoked dourra-stalks. It shut off the wind, however, and when I entered and found the occupants (two other women), talking to each other by the light of a pile of blazing corn-stalks, it looked absolutely cheerful. I stretched myself out on one of the angarebs, and soon relapsed into a better humor. But I am afraid we were not lodged in the most respectable house of Handak, for the women showed no disposition to leave, when we made preparations for sleeping. They paid no attention to my requests, except by some words of endearment, which, from such creatures, were sufficiently disgusting, and I was obliged to threaten them with forcible ejection, before they vacated the house. The camel-men informed me that the place is notorious for its harlotry.
As we had made a forced march of forty miles in one day, I gave the caravan a rest until noon, and treated the men to mutton and mareesa. Prices had already increased, since leaving Soudân, and I could not procure a sheep for less than seventeen piastres. The women, who had returned at sunrise, begged me to give them the entrails, which they cut into pieces and ate raw, with the addition of some onions and salt. The old woman told me a piteous tale of the death of her son, and her own distress, and how King Dyaab (who had passed through Handak the day previous, on his way to Dar El-Màhass) had given her two piastres, and she hoped I would also give her something, that she might buy a new dress. I gave her the same as King Dyaab, which she at once asked me to take back again, as she expected at least nine piastres. Seeing I was about to take her at her word, she made haste to secure the money. Her youngest daughter, a bold, masculine thing, with hair cut close to her head, now came to me for backsheesh. “Oh!” said I, “you are going to do as the old woman did, are you?” “No,” she exclaimed; “if you will give me two piastres, I will ask for no more. The old woman is a miserable wretch!” and she spat upon the ground to show her disgust. “Go!” I said; “I shall give nothing to a girl who insults her mother.”
From Handak to El Ordee is two days’ journey. The country presents the same aspect of desertion and ruin as that in the neighborhood of Old Dongola. Untenanted villages line the road during nearly the whole distance. The face of the country is level, and there is no mountain to be seen on either bank of the Nile. It is a melancholy, deserted region, showing only palms growing wildly and rankly along the river, fields covered with halfeh, water-courses broken down, sakias dismantled, and everywhere dwellings in ruin. Here and there a few inhabitants still lingered, tending their fields of stunted cotton, or watering some patches of green wheat. The general aspect of desolation was heightened by the strong north-wind, which filled the air with clouds of sand, making the sunshine so cold and white, that all the color faded out of the landscape. The palms were dull and dark, and the sand-hills beyond the Nile a dead, lifeless yellow. All this district swarms with black gnats, which seemed to have been sent as a curse upon its desertion, for they never appeared where the country was thickly inhabited and all the soil cultivated.
On the first day after leaving Handak, we passed the villages of Kiar, Sori and Urub, and stopped at a place called Tetti. The wind blew so violently during the night that every thing in my tent, my head included, was thickly covered with dust. The next day we passed a large town called Hannak. The greater part of it was levelled to the earth, and evidently by violence, for the walls were of stone. It stood on a rocky rise, near the river, and had on its highest part the remains of some defences, and a small palace, in tolerable preservation. The hills behind were covered for half a mile with the graves of the former inhabitants, among which I noticed the cones and pyramids of several holy men. As we approached El Ordee (by which name New Dongola is usually called), the appearance of the country improved, although there was still as much deserted as cultivated land. The people we met were partly Dongolese and partly Arabs from the Desert, the latter with bushy hair, shining with grease, and spears in their hands. They cheered us with the news that El Ordee was not distant, and we would arrive there at asser—the time of afternoon prayer, two hours before sunset. My camel-men rejoiced at the prospect of again having mareesa to drink, and I asked old Mohammed if he supposed the saints drank mareesa in Paradise. “Why!” he joyfully exclaimed; “do you know about Paradise?” “Certainly;” said I, “if you lead a good life, you will go straight there, but if you are wicked, Eblis will carry you down into the flames.” “Wallah!” said the old fellow, aside to Achmet; “but this is a good Frank. He certainly has Islam in his heart.”
About two o’clock, we descried the minaret of El Ordee, its sugar-loaf top glittering white in the sun. The place was three or four miles distant, and we did not reach it until after more than an hour’s travel. As we approached, it presented the usual appearance of the Nubian towns—a long line of blank mud walls, above which rise, perhaps, the second stories of a few more ambitious mud houses; here a sycamore, there a palm or two, denoting a garden within; a wide waste of sand round about, some filthy people basking in the sun, and a multitude of the vilest kind of dogs. Near the river there are some fine large gardens, as in Khartoum. I had already decided to stop two days, to rest my caravan, before commencing the long and toilsome march to Wadi-Halfa, but instead of hiring a house I went around the town and pitched my tent on the northern side, on a sandy plain, where I secured pure air and freedom from molestation by the inhabitants.
The morning after my arrival, the Governor, Khoorshid Bey, called at my tent, and I returned the visit in the afternoon. He was a stout, fair-skinned and brown-bearded man of thirty-eight, and looked more like an American than a Turk. I found him in the shop of a Turkish merchant, opposite the door of the mosque, which is built in the centre of the bazaar. Two soldiers were in attendance, and brought me coffee and sherbet. The Bey was particularly anxious to know whether the railroad from Alexandria to Cairo would be built, and how much it would cost. While I was sitting with him, the mollahs were chanting in the mosque opposite, as it was the Moslem Sunday, and groups of natives were flocking thither to say their prayers. Presently the voice of the muezzin was heard from the top of the minaret, chanting in a loud, melodious, melancholy cadence the call to prayer—a singular cry, the effect of which, especially at sunset, is really poetic and suggestive. I took my leave, as the Bey was expected to perform his devotions with the other worshippers.
The town may be seen in an hour. It contains no sights, except the bazaar, which has about twenty tolerable shops, principally stocked with cottons and calicoes, and a great quantity of white shawls with crimson borders, which the people here are fond of wearing over their shoulders. Outside the bazaar, which has a roof of palm-logs covered with matting, are a few shops, containing spices, tobacco, beads, trinkets and the like small articles. Beyond this was the soog, where the people came with their coarse tobacco, baskets of raw cotton, onions, palm-mats, gourds, dates, faggots of fire-wood, sheep and fowls. In this market-place, which ascended and descended with the dirt-heaps left from ruined houses, there were four ostriches, which walked about, completely naturalized to the place. One of them was more than eight feet high—a most powerful and graceful creature. They were not out of place, among the groups of wild-haired Kababish and Bishàree, who frequented the market.
Below the river-bank, which is high, upwards of twenty small trading craft were lying. One had just arrived with a load of lime, which the naked sailors were carrying up the bank in baskets, on their heads. The channel of the Nile here is mainly taken up with the large, sandy island of Tor, and the stream is very narrow. The shore was crowded with women, washing clothes or filling their water-jars, men hoisting full water-skins on the backs of donkeys, and boys of all shades, from whity-yellow to perfect black, bathing and playing on the brink. The northern part of the town appeared to be deserted, and several spacious two-story buildings were falling into ruins. I noticed not more than half a dozen houses which would be considered handsome in Berber or Khartoum. El Ordee ranks next after those places, in all the Egyptian territory beyond Assouan, but has the disadvantage of being more filthy than they.