My camel-men kindled a fire in the splendid moonlight, and regaled themselves with the hind-quarters of a hyena, which they roasted in the coals and devoured with much relish. I had curiosity enough to eat a small piece, which was well-flavored though tough. The Nile roared grandly below our camp all night, in the pauses of the wind.
Abou-Sin, my Dromedary.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE BATN EL-HADJAR.
The Batn El-Hadjar, or Belly of Stone—Ancient Granite Quarries—The Village of Dal—A Ruined Fortress—A Wilderness of Stones—The Hot Springs of Ukmé—A Windy Night—A Dreary Day in the Desert—The Shekh’s Camel Fails—Descent to Samneh—The Temple and Cataract—Meersheh—The Sale of Abou-Sin—We Emerge from the Belly of Stone—A Kababish Caravan—The Rock of Abou-Seer—View of the Second Cataract—We reach Wadi-Halfa—Selling my Dromedaries—Farewell to Abou-Sin—Thanksgiving on the Ferry-boat—Parting with the Camel-men.
On the sixth day after leaving Dongola I passed through Sukkôt, and reached the commencement of Batn El-Hadjar—The Belly of Stone—as the savage mountain country for a hundred miles south of the Second Cataract is termed. With each day the road became more rough and toilsome, and my camels moved more languidly. In spite of the fatigue which we all endured, I felt so much strengthened by our free life and so much interested in the remarkable country through which we were passing, that I felt something like regret on approaching the southern limit of travel on the Nile. Not so my dragoman and servant, who could not enough thank God and the Prophet for having taken them in safety through countries which they deemed the verge of the world. Achmet positively declared he would never make the trip again, for no second journey could be equally fortunate. My camel-men, I found, had never before travelled to Wadi Halfa by the western bank, but by a wonderful Arab instinct, they never went astray from the road.
The Batn El-Hadjar marks its commencement by a range of granite hills, which break the river into a foaming cataract. After leaving camp, our road lay along the Nile, behind some high sand-hills. In front of us appeared Djebel Ufeer, a peak about fifteen hundred feet in height, its naked sides tinted of a deep, rich purple hue by the glowing air. The Nile flows directly towards its base, making a slight curve, as if to pass it on the eastern side, but finding the granite rocks heaped together too thickly, changes its course and washes the western foot of the mountain. The granite lies scattered about in vast masses, taking all sorts of quaint and fanciful shapes. The hills themselves are merely collections of boulders of all sizes, from three to twenty feet in diameter, piled on an enormous bed or stratum of the same. Intermixed with this are beds of a rich yellowish-red granite, which crops out under the piles of gray, and has been worked, wherever it appears in large masses. The traces of the ancient quarrymen still remain, in the blocks bearing marks of the wooden wedges by which they were split. In one place I noticed two fragments of a column, similar to those in the palace at Old Dongola. The granite is equal in quality and still more abundant than that at Assouan, but was only quarried to a limited extent. The aspect of the country is rugged in the highest degree, and how the Nile gets through it became more and more a wonder to me. His bed is deep-sunken between enormous stone-piles, back of which are high stone mountains, and wherever there is a hollow between them, it is filled with sand. The only vegetation was a few bunches of miserable grass, and some of those desert shrubs which grow at the very doors of Tartarus, so tenacious of life are they. A narrow shelf, on the opposite bank, high above the river, bore the renowned palm of Sukkôt, and frequently in the little coves I saw the living green of the young wheat. The steep banks were planted with lupins, as the people there had nothing to fear from the hippopotami.
While I was breakfasting off a great granite table, a man who rode by on a donkey cheered me with the news that the village of Dal was but a short distance ahead. I had fixed upon this as our resting-place for the night, but on finding it so near, resolved to push on to some natural hot springs and ruins of ancient baths, which the camel-men had informed me were about four hours further, to the right of the caravan track. At Dal, however, a difficult akaba commences, and my camels already marched so slowly and wearily that I judged it best to stop and give them a little rest. About the village there are some scattering doum and date-palms, which lead a hard existence, half buried in sand and choked with the old leaves, which the natives are too idle to prune. The people were in the fields, cutting some wheat which was just ripe, and two sakias, shaded by clusters of palms, watered a few patches of cotton. I made inquiries, but had much difficulty in finding the location of the hot springs. Finally, one of the men consented to become my guide in the morning, and conducted us to a camping-ground, where there was a little grass for the camels. Lured by the promise of backsheesh, he brought me the leanest of young sheep, which I purchased for eight piastres. The night was calm, cool and delicious, and steeped my whole frame in balm, after the burning day. The moon, nearly full, shone with a gray and hazy lustre, and some insect that shrilled like a tree-toad, reminded me of home.
Our Dallee guide, Hadji Mohammed, as he was called, from having made two pilgrimages to Mecca, was on hand before sunrise. Starting in advance of the caravan, I walked along the river-bank, towards a castellated building on an eminence which I had noticed the previous evening, while sketching the landscape. My path was over huge beds of gray granite, from which the old Egyptians might have cut obelisks of a single block, not only one hundred, but five hundred feet in length. The enormous masses which had been separated from these beds and rolled into rounded masses by the chafing of primeval floods, lay scattered on the surface, singly, or piled in fantastic groups. The building was a large fortress of stones and clay, with massive walls, on the summit of an island-like peak overhanging the river, and separated from the bank by a deep chasm, which is filled with water during the inundations, but was then dry, and its sides green with wheat and beans. Wild doum-palms, hanging heavy with green fruit, grew in the patches of soil among the rocks and overhung the ravine. The fortress was a very picturesque object, with its three square towers, backed by the roaring flood and the dark violet-blue crags of Djebel Mémé behind. The forms of the landscape—except the palms—were all of the far North, but the coloring was that of the ripe and glowing South. I was so absorbed in the scene, that the caravan passed unnoticed, having taken a path further from the river. After wandering about for some time, I climbed one of the granite piles and scanned the country in all directions, but could see nothing. Finally I descried a distant trail, and on reaching it, recognized the tracks of my camels. I hurried on, and in half an hour met Hadji Mohammed and one of my camel-men, coming back in great tribulation, fearful that I was lost.