A journey to Central Africa

by Bayard Taylor

The Nile makes a great curve through the land of Màhass, to avoid which the road passes through an akaba, about forty miles in length. At the corner, where the river curves at a right angle from west to south, is a small ruined place called Fakir Bender. The high bank is a little less steep here than at other places, and its sides are planted with lupins. At the end of the village is an immense sont tree, apparently very old. A large earthen water-jar, with a gourd beside it, stood in the shade. The fakeer, or holy man, from whom the place is named, was soon in attendance, and as our camels knelt under the tree, presented me with a gourd of cool water, “in the name of God.” I gave him ten paràs before we left, but he did not appear to be satisfied, for these holy men have great expectations. I ordered two water-skins filled, and after an hour’s delay, we entered on the akaba.

Over rough and stony ridges, which made hard travelling for the camels, we came upon a rolling plain, bounded in the distance by a chain of hills, which we reached by the middle of the afternoon. The path, instead of seeking a pass or gorge, led directly up the side, which, though not very high, was exceedingly steep and covered with loose sand, up which the camels could scarcely climb. The top was a stratum of red porphyry, cropping out of the sand in immense masses. Behind us the dreary Desert extended to Djebel Foga and the mountains about the cataract: the palms of the Nile were just visible in the distance. Crossing the summit ridge, we entered a narrow plateau, surrounded by naked black peaks—a most savage and infernal landscape. The northern slope was completely covered with immense porphyry boulders, among which our path wound. Nearly every rock had a pile of small stones heaped upon it, as a guide to caravans, and merely for descending this ridge there were at least two hundred of them. The plain now extended away to the north and east, bounded by a confusion of black, barren mountains, out of which rose two lofty peaks. Towards evening we met a Nubian family, with their donkeys, on their way southward. They begged for water, which we gave them, as their supply was entirely exhausted. I found a bed of hard gravel large enough for my tent, but we had great difficulty in driving the pegs. The camel-men selected the softest places among the rocks for their beds, but the camels stretched their long necks on all sides in the vain search for vegetation. I sat at my tent door, and watched the short twilight of the South gather over the stony wilderness, with that strange feeling of happiness which the contemplation of waste and desolate landscapes always inspires. There was not a blade of grass to be seen; the rocks, which assumed weird and grotesque forms in the twilight, were as black as ink; beyond my camp there was no life in the Desert except the ostrich and the hyena—yet I would not have exchanged the charm of that scene for a bower in the gardens of the Hesperides.

The dawn was glimmering gray and cold when I arose, and the black summits of the mountains showed dimly through a watery vapor. The air, however, was dry, though cool and invigorating, and I walked ahead for two hours, singing and shouting from the overflow of spirits. I hoped to catch a glimpse of the Nile before mounting my dromedary, but one long black ridge of stones rose after another, and there was no sudden flash of green across the darkness of the Desert. At last, towards noon, through a notch in the drear and stony chaos, the double line of palms appeared in the north east. The river came from the east, out of the black mountain wilderness. The valley is very narrow, and cultivation is only possible in the coves of soil embayed among the hills. I came down on one of them—a meadow of halfeh, back of the little village of Koyee—and stopped an hour to rest the camels. A caravan of merchants, bound for Kordofan and Dar-Fūr, had just encamped there, to rest during the hot hours, according to their custom. Among them were some hadji, or pilgrims from Dar-Fūr, on their way home from Mecca, and a negro from Fazogl, who had belonged to a European, and had lived in Naples. He was now free and going home, wearing a shabby Frank dress, but without money, as he came at once to beg of me. A Nubian woman came from the huts near at hand, bringing me a large gourd of buttermilk, which I shared with the camel-drivers.

I set the camels in motion again, and we entered a short akaba, in order to cross a broad stony ridge, which advanced quite to the river’s edge. The path was up and down the sides of steep hollows, over a terrible waste of stones. Down these hollows, which shelved towards the river, we saw the palms of the opposite bank—a single dark-green line, backed by another wilderness, equally savage. Through all this country of Màhass the Desert makes a desperate effort to cut off the glorious old River. It flings rocks into its bed, squeezes him between iron mountains, compels him to turn and twist through a hundred labyrinths to find a passage, but he pushes and winds his way through all, and carries his bright waters in triumph down to his beloved Egypt. There was, to me, something exceedingly touching in watching his course through that fragment of the pre-Adamite chaos—in seeing the type of Beauty and Life stealing quietly through the heart of a region of Desolation and Death. From the stony slopes of the hills I looked down on his everlasting palms with the same old joy new-created in my heart.

After passing the akaba, I came to a village which I took to be Soleb, but on inquiring, the people pointed ahead. I rode on, around a slight curve of the trees, and was startled by a landscape of most unexpected interest and beauty. Before me, over the crest of a black, rocky ridge, a cluster of shattered pillars stood around the falling doorway of a temple, the whole forming a picturesque group, cut clear against the sky. Its tint of soft yellow-gray, was finely relieved by the dark green of the palms and the pure violet of some distant jagged peaks on the eastern bank. Beyond it, to the west, three peaks of white and purple limestone rock trembled in the fiery glare from the desert sands. The whole picture, the Desert excepted, was more Grecian than Egyptian, and was perfect in its forms and groupings. I know of no other name for the ruin than the Temple of Soleb. It was erected by Amunoph III. or Memnon, and the Arcadian character of the landscape of which it is the central feature, harmonized thoroughly with my fancy, that Amunoph was a poet.

The temple stands on the west bank, near the river, and from whatever point it is viewed, has a striking effect. The remains consist of a portico, on a raised platform, leading to a court once surrounded by pillars. Then follows a second and more spacious portico, with a double row of three pillars on each side. This opens upon a second pillared court, at the opposite end of which is a massive doorway, leading to the adyta of the temple, now completely levelled to the earth. The entire length of the ruin is about two hundred feet. There are nine pillars, with a single block of their architrave, and portions of two of the porticoes still standing: the remainder of the temple is a mass of ruins. The greatest pains have been taken to destroy it completely, and all the mound on which it stands is covered with huge blocks, thrown one over the other in the wildest confusion. In one place, only, I noticed the disjointed segments of a column, still lying as they fell. The pedestals remain in many places, so that one can partially restore the original order. When complete, it must have been a majestic and imposing edifice. The material is the white limestone of the adjacent mountains, veined with purple streaks, and now much decomposed from the sun and rain. From the effect of this decomposition, the columns which remain standing are cracked and split in many places, and in the fissures thus made, numbers of little swallows and starlings have built their nests, where they sit peeping out through the sculptures of gods. The columns and doorways are covered with figures, now greatly blurred, though still legible. I noticed a new style of joining the portrait of a monarch with his cartouche, the latter representing his body, out of which his head and arms issued, like the crest of a coat of arms. The columns represent the stalks of eight water-plants bound together, with a capital, or rather prolonged abacus, like the Osiride column. They are thirty feet in height, without the pedestal, and five feet in diameter. This is the sum of my observations: the rest belongs to the antiquarian.

Before night, we passed a third akaba, to get around the limestone ridge, which here builds a buttress of naked rock over the Nile, and at sunset again saw the palms—but this time the renowned palms of Dar Sukkôt, for we had crossed the border of Dar El-Màhass. They lined the river in a thick grove of stems, with crowns of leafy luxuriance. The village of Noolwee, scattered for half a mile in their shade, was better built than any I saw in Dongola. Many of the houses were inclosed in square courts, and had a second story, the massive mud walls sloping towards each other like a truncated pyramid. Achmet, Ali and myself bought about fifty piastres worth of the celebrated dates of Sukkôt. They were the largest and best flavored I ever saw, and are said to preserve their quality for years. They are sold at a piastre for an earthen measure containing about two hundred. When gathered, they are first slightly dried in the large magazines, and then buried in the earth. The population of Sukkôt subsists apparently on the profits of selling them, for little else is cultivated along the river. Even here, nevertheless, where the people are better able to bear the grinding rule of Egypt, one meets with deserted fields and ruined dwellings. The King of El-Màhass informed me, when in Khartoum, that his people were obliged to pay six hundred piastres (thirty dollars) tax on each water-mill, being just double the lawful amount, (which, alone, is very oppressive), and that his country was fast becoming depopulated, in consequence.

On the following day I passed the large island of Sai. The country here is more open and the Nile has a less vexed course. The mountains, especially the lofty blue mass of Djebel Abyr, have not the forced and violent forms common to the porphyry formation. Their outlines are long, sloping, and with that slight but exquisite undulation which so charmed me in the hills of Arcadia, in Greece, and in Monte Albano near Rome. Their soft, clear, pale-violet hue showed with the loveliest effect behind the velvety green of the thick palm clusters, which were parted here and there by gleams of the bright blue river. From the northern end of Sai, the river gradually curves to the east. The western shore is completely invaded by the sands, and the road takes a wide sweep inland to avoid the loose, sliding drifts piled up along the bank. We had not gone far before we found a drift of brilliant yellow sand thirty feet high and two hundred yards in length, lying exactly across our road. It had evidently been formed within a few days. It was almost precisely crescent-shaped, and I could not account for the action of the wind in building such a mound on an open plain, which elsewhere was entirely free from sand. We rounded it and soon afterwards entered on a region of sand, where to the west and north the rolling yellow waves extended to the horizon, unbroken by a speck of any other color. It was a boundless, fathomless sea of sand to the eye, which could scarcely bear the radiated light playing over its hot surface. The day (for a wonder) was somewhat overcast, and as the shadows of small clouds followed one another rapidly over the glaring billows, they seemed to heave and roll like those of the sea. I was forced to turn away my head, faint and giddy with the sight. My camels tugged painfully through this region, and after two hours we reached a single sont tree, standing beside a well, and called sugger el-abd (the Tree of the Slave). It was pointed out by the camel-men as being half-way between El Ordee and Wadi Halfa.

We journeyed on all the afternoon through a waste of sandy and stony ridges, and as night drew near, I became anxious to reach the river, no trace of which could be seen. I rode up one of the highest ridges, and lo! there were the tops of the date-groves in a hollow, not a quarter of a mile distant, on my right. The camels’ heads were soon turned in that direction, and I encamped at once on the bank, where my beasts found sufficient grass and thorns for the first time in three days. The river here flows in a deep channel, buried among the hills, and there is neither cultivation nor population on the western bank. On the opposite side there was a narrow strip of soil, thickly planted with date-trees.